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SOME IVHIMS OF FATE 



Some Whims of Fate 


BY 


MfiNIE MURIEL DOWIE 


AUTHOR OF 


II 


'A GIRL IN THE KARPATHIANS,’ 
“ GALLIA,” ETC. 






¥ 



JOHN LANE 

THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
1896 




Copyright, 1896, by 
JOHN LANE 


Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York 




the five stories here grouped 
together two have appeared 
in the “Yellow Book” and one, 
the Scottish story, in “ Chambers.’ 
Journal.” In looking them over 
before their presentation in book 
form, it seemed to me that the 
main thread of each was some 
whim of fate, and that their 
neighbourship under this title was 
congruous and correct. 

M. M. D. 

Ben More^ Coigach, 

September 1896 . 


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PAGE 

WLADISLAW’S ADVENT . i 
THE HINT O’ HAIRST . . 49 
A MAN I MET . . . .131 

AN IDYLL IN MILLINERY . 151 


A COWL IN CRACOW 


205 




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WLADISLAW’S ADVENT 


I 

Whek I first saw Wladislaw lie was 
sitting on a high tabouret near a hot 
iron sheet that partially surrounded the 
tall coke stove; the arches of his feet 
were curved over the top bar, toes and 
heels both bent down, suggestive of a bird 
clasping its perch. This position brought 
the shiny knees of his old blue serge 
trousers close up to his chest — for he was 
bending far forward towards his easel — 
and the charcoal dust on the knee over 
which he occasionally sharpened his fusain 
was making a dull smear upon the grey 
flannel shirt which his half -opened waist- 
coat exposed. 

He wore no coat: it was hanging on 
the edge of the iron screen, and his right 
shirt-sleeve, rolled up for freedom in his 
work, left a strong, rather smooth, arm 
bare. 


4 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


He always chose a corner near the 
stove ; the coke fumes never gave him a 
headache, it seemed. It was supposed 
that he felt the cold of Paris severely ; 
but this can hardly have been the case, 
considering the toughening winters of his 
youth away in Poland there. My obser- 
vation led me tp believe that the proximity 
was courted on account of the facilities it 
afforded for lighting his cigarette. When 
he rolled a new one and had returned the 
flat, shabby, red leather case to a pocket, 
he would get up, open the stove door and 
pick up a piece of coke — one whose lower 
half was scarlet and its upper still black — 
between his finger and thumb, and, hold- 
ing it calmly to the cigarette, suck in a 
light with a single inhalation, tossing the 
coke to its place and re-seating himself 
upon his tabouret, completely unaware of 
the amused pairs of eyes that watched 
quizzically to see his brow pucker if he 
burnt himself. 

Wladislaw was his first name ; he natur- 
ally had another by which he was gener- 
ally known, but it is useless to record a 
second set of Polish syllables for the 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


5 


reader to struggle with, so I leave it 
alone. His first name is pronounced Vlad- 
islav, as nearly as one may write it ; and 
this is to be remembered, for I prefer to 
retain the correct spelling. He had been 
working quite a fortnight in the studio 
before the day when I strolled in and 
noticed him, and I do not think that up 
till then any one had the excitement of 
his acquaintance. 

One or two sketch-books contained 
hasty and furtive pencil splashes which 
essayed the picturesqueness of his feat- 
ures ; but he was notably shy, and if he 
observed any one to be regarding him 
with the unmistakable measuring eye of 
the sketcher, he would frown and dip 
behind the canvas on his easel with the 
silly sensitiveness of a dabchick. At the 
dingy cremerie where he ate herrings 
marines — chiefly with a knife — the curious 
glances of other dejeuneurs annoyed him 
extremely ; which was absurd, of course, 
for as a rule no artist objects to being 
made a victim of a brother’s brush. He 
would colour — I was going to write, like 
a girl, but why not like the boy that 


6 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


lie was 1 — when the lively Louise, who 
changed the plates, or swept the knife 
and fork of such as did not know the 
habits of the place back on the crumby 
marble table with a ‘‘ Y’la M’si-eu ” — sent 
a smile accurately darted, into his long 
eyes. He didn’t know how to respond to 
Louise, or any other glances of the same 
sort in those days ; but if I am encour- 
aged to tell further of him, I can give 
the history of his initiation, for I am 
bold to say none knows it better — ^unless 
it be Louise herself. 

What puzzled me about his face, which 
was a beautiful one, of the pure and 
refined Hebrew type so rarely met with 
— ^the type that was a little common, let 
us hope, in the days when God singled 
out His People — what puzzled me about 
it was that it should seem so familiar 
to me, for, as I say, the type is seldom 
found. When I came upon Wladislaw, 
hurrying down the street to the studio 
with the swiftness of a polecat — no sort 
of joke intended — it would flash upon me 
that surely I knew the face, yet not in 
the manner when one feels one has met 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


7 


some one in a train or sat near him in a 
tramcar. 

The mystery of this was explained 
before ever I had analyzed to myself 
exactly how the face affected me and 
where I could have seen it before. It 
was at the eleven o’clock rest one morn- 
ing, when the strife of tongues was let 
loose and I was moving among the easels 
and stools, talking to the various students 
that I knew. One of them, her book 
open, her eyes gleaming, and her pencil 
avid of sketches, was lending a vague 
ear to the model, who had been once in 
England, and was describing his experi- 
ences with a Royal Academician. They 
were standing near the stove, the model, 
careless of the rapid alteration which 
the grateful heat was effecting in his 
skin tones, steadily veering from the 
transparent purple which had gratified 
an ardent impressionist all the morning, 
to a dull, hot scarlet upon the fronts of 
his thighs. While she was talking to the 
model, my friend was sketching Wladislaw, 
who ranged remotely at the cold end of 
the room. The impressionist joined the 


8 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


group to remonstrate in effectual French 
with the model, and glanced into the 
sketch-book in passing. 

‘‘Just the church-window type, isn’t 
he?” said this flippant person, alluding 
to the Pole; “and I have seen him behind 
the altar too, painted on the wall with a 
symmetrical arrangement of stars in the 
background, and his feet on a blue air- 
balloon.” 

The sketcher nodded, and swept in a 
curved line for the coat collar just as a 
controlling voice announced that the rest 
was up. 

And I wondered how I had been so 
dull as never to think of it ; for it was 
perfectly true, and oh, so obvious now 
that I knew it ! Wladislaw’s beautiful 
head, with the young light-brown beard, 
the pure forehead, and the long sorrow- 
ful eyes, was an ideal presentment of the 
Nazarene ; without the alteration of either 
feature or expression, he stood up a 
gloriously simple realisation of the Christ 
as all pictures have tried to show Him. 

I was so amazed by this illumination, 
that I sat down beside the disconsolate 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


9 


impressionist, wlio couldn’t do a thing 
till that idiot cooled down,” and was 
“losing half the morning — the Professor’s 
morning, too,” and talked it over. 

“’m yes — he is. Hadn’t you noticed it? 
I said it the very day he came in. I 
wonder if he sees it himseK ? Ho you 
know, I think I could get rather a good 
thing of him from here? Yes, you wait; 
I’ve nothing to do till that beastly hectic 
colour fades off the model. I’m not 
going to bother about the background ; 
I’ve painted that old green curtain till 
I’m tired. Get a tabouret and sit down 
while I design a really good window.” 

She sketched away rapidly, and I 
watched her as she worked. 

“Funny,” she remarked, as she blocked 
in the figure with admirable freedom ; 
“I’ve never seen the Christ treated in 
profile, have you ? It’ s rather new — you 
watch.” 

It is my regret that I did not dis- 
regard every rule and every cour- 
tesy and snatch that sketch from her, 
half -finished though it was ; but of a 
sudden the door opened and the Pro- 


10 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


lessor came in. The impressionist, with 
a sour look at the model’s thighs and a 
despairing consciousness that she would 
have to hear that her colour was too 
cold, shut her book with a snap and 
resumed her brushes. 

I had to manoeuvre cautiously a retreat 
to the stairway — for idlers were publicly 
discouraged during the Professor’s visits 
— and people who would leave olf work 
at any minute when I dropped in to 
hear the news on ordinary mornings, 
looked up and frowned studiously over 
the creaking of my retreating boots. 

It may have been about a week later 
that my acquaintance with Wladislaw 
commenced, and again the detailing of 
that circumstance is to serve another 
purpose one of these days ; at any rate, 
we came across one another in a manner 
which is to a friendship what a glass 
frame is to a cucumber, and soon studio 
friends came to me for news of him, 
and my protection of him was an openly 
admitted fact. At first I had been some- 
what burdened by a consciousness of his 
curious beauty ; one is not often in the 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


11 


way of talking to a beautiful man of 
any kind, but I can imagine that classical 
beauty or historic beauty might be more 
easily supported. JSTo particular depth of 
touch would be felt by a meeting with 
Apollo or Antinous ; neither awe nor 
reverence, however discredited and worn 
out its tradition, has ever attached to 
them. The counterpart of Montrose or 
the bonnie Earl o’ Murray, much as 
one would like to meet either, would 
arouse only picturesque sentimental 
reflection ; but to walk through the 
Jardin du Luxembourg on a sunny 
day eating gaufres^ with — and I say it 
without the faintest intention of ir- 
reverence — with a figure of the Saviour 
of mankind beside you, is — is arresting. 
When the eye returns unintentionally 
upon it in the silent moments of con- 
versation, it gives pause. Distinctly it 
gives pause. I have never held it an 
excuse for anything in art or literature 
that one should turn upon a public 
about to scoff, to be offended, to be 
frightened, and announce that ‘‘it is 
true” : that the incident in either a pic- 


12 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


ture or a story should be ^^true” is not 
a sufficient excuse for the painting or 
the telling of it. But when I insist 
courteously to readers of certain religious 
convictions that I am not making up” 
either my scenes, my characters, or what, 
for want of a better name, shall be called 
my story, I am only desirous that they 
shall absolve me from any desire to be 
irreverent and to shock their feelings. 
They might remember that what is 
reverent to them may not be so to me ; 
but I do not hope to secure so great a 
concession by any means. What I would 
finally point out is that the irreverence 
goes back further than the mere writ- 
ing down of the story ; they must accuse 
a greater than I if they object to the 
facts of the case — ^they must state their 
quarrel to the controlling power which 
designed poor Wladislaw’s physiognomy : 
to use some of the phrases beloved of 
the very class I am entreating, I would 
suggest that the boy did not make 
himself;” he was ‘‘sent into the world” 
like that. 

I daresay, considering what I am going 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


13 


to relate — I daresay he wished he had not 
been ; he was so very shy a fellow, and 
it led to his being a great deal observed 
and commented upon. What encouraged 
me to feel at home with him in spite of 
his appearance was the real youngness of 
his nature. He was extraordinarily simple 
and — well, fluffy. For he really suggested 
a newly-hatched chicken to me ; bits of 
the eggshell were still clinging to his 
yellow down, if I may hint at the meta- 
phor. 

His cleverness was tremendously in ad- 
vance of his training and his executive 
powers. Some day, one could see, he was 
going to paint marvellously, if he would 
wait and survive his failures and forbear 
to cut his throat by the way. His mind 
was utterly and entirely on his work; I 
never heard him speak of much else ; 
work and the difficulty of producing one- 
self, no matter with the help of what 
medium, was our everyday topic. And 
when desperate fits overtook us we be- 
wailed the necessity of producing our- 
selves at all. Why was it in us? We 
didn’t think anything good that we did; 


14 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


we didn’t suppose we were ever going 
to compass anything decent, and work 
was a trouble, a fever of disappointment 
and stress, which we did not enjoy in 
the least. The pleasure of work, we 
assured one another again and again, was 
a pleasure we had never felt. By nature, 
inclination and habit we were incorrigibly 
idle ; yet inside us was this spirit, this 
silly, useless, hammering beast that im- 
pelled us to the handling of pen and 
pencil, and made us sick and irritable 
and unhappy, and prevented us taking 
any pleasure in our dinner. 

That was how we used to talk together 
when we were striding through the woods 
round Versailles or idling among storied 
tombs in the cemetery at Montmorency ; 
and, dear me ! what a lot of enjoyment 
we got out of it, and how good the sand- 
wiches were when we rested for our 
luncheon ! Sometimes Wladislaw talked 
of his mother, whom I apprehended to 
be a teak-grained Calvinistic lady with a 
certain resemblance to the hen who had 
reared a duckling by mistake. I wish 
now that I had heard more stories of 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


15 


that rigorous household of his youth, 
where the fires in winter were let out at 
four in the afternoon, because his mother 
had the idea that one did not feel the 
cold so much in bed if inured to it. by 
a sustained chill of some eight hours’ 
duration. She was probably quite right : 
one only wonders why she did not pursue 
the principle further and light no fires 
in the day, because proportionately, of 

course but no matter. And, indeed, 

there are no proportions in the case. 
Once reach the superlative frozen, and 
there is nothing left to feel. His third 
subject was the frivolity of Paris, of 
which we knew everything by hearsay 
and nothing by experience, so were able 
to discuss with a ‘‘wet sheet and a fiow- 
ing sea,’’ so to speak. He hated Paris, 
and he hated frivolity, even as he hated 
French. Our conversations, I ought to 
say, were carried on in German, which 
we spoke with almost a common mea- 
sure of inaccuracy ; and I think that he 
probably knew as little of the French 
language as he knew of the frivolity of 
Paris. 


16 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


I tried to encourage "him to take long 
walks and long tours on tramways — it 
should never be forgotten that you can 
go all over Paris for threepence — and 
when his work at the studio was suf- 
ficiently discouraging he would do so, 
sometimes coming with me, sometimes 
going alone. We explored Montmartre to- 
gether, both by day and gaslight ; we 
fared forth to the Abattoirs, to the 
Place de la Koquette, to the Boulevard 
Beaumarchais and the Boulevard Port 
Boyal, the Temple and ‘‘les Halles.” 

But Wladislaw was alone the day he 
set out to inspect the Bois de Boulogne, 
the Parc Monceau, the Madeleine, and 
th6 grands Boulevards. 

I remember seeing him start. If he 
had been coming with me he would have 
had on a tie and collar (borrowed from 
another student) and his other coat ; he 
would, in fact, have done his best to 
look ordinary, to rob himself, in his 
youthful pride and ignorant vanity, of 
his picturesque appearance. I am sorry 
to say it, since he was an artist; but it 
is true— he would. 


Wladislaw’s Advent 17 

As it was, he sallied out in the grey 
woollen shirt, with its low collar, the 
half -buttoned waistcoat, the old, bine, 
sloppily-hanging coat, with one sleeve 
obstinately burst at the back, and the 
close astrakhan cap on one side of his 
smooth straight hazel hair. When I ran 
across him next day in the neighbourhood 
of the oleander tubs that surrounded 
with much decorative ability the doors 
of the Cafe Amadou, he agreed to come 
to my rooms and have a cup of coffee, 
in order to narrate the exciting and 
mysterious incident of the day before. 

Sitting on each side of my stove, which 
was red-hot and threatening to crack at 
any minute, Wladislaw, with cautions to 
me “not to judge too soon: I should see 
if it had not been strange, this that had 
happened to him,” told me this ridiculous 
story. 

He had started up the Bois ; he had 
found the Parc Monceau ; he had come 
down a big street to the Madeleine ; he 
had looked in : it had reminded him of 
a concert-hall, and was not at all im- 
pressive (^ar nicht imponirend ) ; he had 
2 


18 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


walked along the left-hand side of the 
Boulevard des Capucines. It was as poor 
a street as he could have imagined in a 
big town, the shops wretched ; he sup- 
posed in London our shops were better ? 
I assured him that in London the shops 
were much better ; that it w^as a standing 
mystery to me, as to all the other English 
women I knew, where the pretty things 
for which Paris is celebrated were to be 
bought. And I implored him to tell me 
his adventure. 

Ah ! Well — now the point was reached ; 
now I was to hear ! One minute ! — Well, 
he had come opposite the Cafe de la 
Paix, and he had paused an instant to 
contemplate the unrelieved commonplace 
ugliness of the average Frenchman as 
there to be observed — and then he had 
pursued his way. 

It was getting dusk in the winter after- 
noon, and when he came through the 
Place de T Opera aU the lights were lit, 
and he was delighted, as who must not 
be, by the effect of that particular bit 
of Paris ? He was just crossing the Place 
to go down the left-hand side of the 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


19 


Avenue, when it occurred to him that he 
was being followed. 

It here struck me that the beginning 
of Wladislaw’s first adventure in Paris 
was highly unoriginal ; but I waited with 
a tempered interest to hear how he had 
dealt with it. Here are his own words, 
but losing much of their quaintness by 
being rendered in an English which even 
I cannot make quite ungrammatical. 

“I went on very quickly a little way, 
then I walked slowly, slowly — very slow, 
and turned suddenly sharp round. Yes, 
I was being followed ; there he was, a man 

in a black frock coat, and ” 

“A man?” I blurted out, having been 
somehow unprepared for this develop- 
ment. 

What else ? ” said Wladislaw. Did you 
think it was going to be a cat ? ” 

Well, more or less, I had fancied . . . . 
but I wouldn’t interrupt him. 

Black coat and grey trousers, black bow 
tie and one of those hats, you know?” 
With his cigarette hand he made a rapid 
pantomime about his head that outlined 
sufficiently the flat-brimmed top hat of the 


20 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


artistic Frencliman, so often distinguished, 
but more usually a little ridiculous. 

« ‘‘I went on at an ordinary pace till I 

came to the Rue de Rivoli, then at that 
Cafe where the omnibus for St. Sulpice 
stops, I waited” — Wladislaw’s eyes were 
gleaming with an unwonted mischief, ’ 
and he had quite lost his Judaic majesty 
— ‘‘to get a good look. There he was. 
A man not yet forty ; dark, interest- 
ing, powerful face ; a red ribbon in his 
buttonhole.” 

“A red ribbon?” But then I remem- 
bered that every second Frenchman has 
a red ribbon. 

“I thought, ‘shall I take him a nice 
walk this cold evening ? Shall I go 
down and cross the river to ISTotre 
Dame, then home up the Boulevard St. 
Michel ? ’ But no, it was late. I had 
had nothing to eat ; I wanted to get to 
the Bouillon Robert before dinner would 
be over. I ran into the Bureau and got 
a number; then I watched, and the first 
omnibus that had room I climbed up on 
the imperiale and watched him try for a 
seat inside! Ah, I knew he was after 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


21 


me. I felt as if I had stolen some- 
thing ! Then the omnibus started. He 
had not got a seat. When it is already 
six you cannot get a seat inside, you 
know ? ” 

I knew. ‘‘He came up with you?” I 
said. 

“ On the imperiale also there was no 
room. I lost sight of him, but on the 
Pont du Carousel I saw ^fiacre 

In spite of my earlier feeling I was a 
little interested ; more so when Wladislaw 
told of his walking into a certain res- 
taurant near the Gare Montparnasse — a 
restaurant where you dine with Jiors 
dJceumes and dessert at a scoured wood 
table for 80 centimes, sitting down beside 
several oumiers — and seeing the stranger 
saunter in and take a seat at a corner 
table. 

I feel quite incapable of rendering in 
English the cat-and-mouse description of 
the dinner which Wladislaw gave me ; so 
I come to the time when he paid his 
addition^ and, turning up his coat collar, 
made his way out and up the Boulevard 
Montparnasse in the ill-lighted winter 


22 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


night, the stranger appearing inevitably 
in his wake at each gas-lamp, till the 
side street was reached in which Wladis- 
law lived on the fourth floor of a 
certain number thirteen. At his door 
Wladislaw, of course, paused, and looked 
the street up and down without seeing 
his pursuer. 

“But no doubt,” said my sly Pole, “he 
was hiding inside a courtyard door. 
And now, what do you make of that ? ” 

I had to own that I made nothing of 
it ; and we sat and speculated foolishly 
for fully half an hour, till we tired of 
the effort, and returned to our equally 
vapid haverings about “work” and our 
common difficulties. 

Four days later — I had meantime con- 
fided the story to no one — four days 
later Wladislaw approached me myster- 
iously from behind as I was returning 
one morning from a visit to the Eue de 
la Gaiete, with a bunch of onions, half 
a loaf of black bread, and two turkey 
thighs in a string bag. 

I knew from the set of his cap that 
something unusual had happened ; and, 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


23 


besides, it was the hour at which he 
should have been scraping at his fusain 
in the men’s studio. He put a letter in 
my hand. 

‘‘You will say nothing to anybody? I 
want you to translate it. I can’t under- 
stand it all. But you will tell no one?” 

I responded with an eager denial and 
the question as to who there could be 
for me to tell. 

He seemed to overlook the half- 
hundred of students we both knew as 
readily as I did ; and we opened the 
letter. 

This was it : — 

“ Monsieur, — My name may perhaps be 
a sufficient assurance to you that my 
unusual conduct of the other evening in 
discovering for myself your residence 
and profession had no unworthy motive. 
The explanation is simple. I am paint- 
ing a large canvas, to be called ‘ The 
Temptation.’ I cannot proceed for want 
of a model for my Christ’. When my 
eyes fell upon you, I realised instantly 
that yours was the only face in the 


24 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


world that could satisfy my aspira- 
tion. It was impossible for me not 
to follow you, at the risk of any 
and every misunderstanding. I beg you 
to receive my complete apologies. Will 
you sit to me? I appeal to you as a • 
brother of the brush — permit me to leave 
behind me the most perfect Christ-face 
that has ever been conceived. Time and 
terms shall be as you will. 

‘‘Accept, Monsieur and colleague, the 
assurance of my most distinguished 
sentiments. “Dufoue.” 

I looked at it, laughing and gasping. 

I repeated some of the sounding phrases. 

So this artist — well I knew his name at 
the Mirlitons — this genius of the small 
red fleck had pursued Wladislaw for miles 
on foot and in fiacre^ had submitted him- 
self and his digestion to an 80-centime 
dinner of blatant horse flesh, had tracked 
the student to his lodgings, got his style 
and title from Madame in the rez-de- 
cJiaussee^ and Anally written him this 
letter to ask, to implore, rather, that 
Wladislaw should be the model for his 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


25 


contemplated picture of the Kedeemer ! It 
was really interesting enough ; but what 
struck me as curious was that Bufour of 
the tulle skirt and tarlatan celebrity — 
the portraitist of the jilles de should 
conceive it possible to add to his reputa- 
tion by painting the Man of Sorrows. 

II 

It will have been gathered that Wladis- 
law was poor ; just how poor, I think no 
one among us ever knew. He would sit 
all the evening long without a fire, and 
his habit of keeping a large piece of 
bread in a coat pocket and breaking bits 
off to nibble during the morning or after- 
noon’s work very naturally gave rise to 
a legend that he lived upon bread alone. 

I, for one, would sooner believe that to 
have been the case than have credited for 
a moment the story of the student who 
claimed to have noticed a heap of fish 
heads and tails in a corner of his room, the 
disagreeable residue of a small barrel of 
raw dried herring which he had kept by 
him. 


26 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


I suppose that he paid his classes and 
boarding charges out of money sent at 
intervals from home, like any other stu- 
dent ; and the final outward evidence of 
any shortness in cash was the colour of 
the packet in which he bought his tobacco. 
A careful observer might have accurately 
dated the arrival of his funds, by noting 
the orange paper which inclosed his 
‘‘Levant Superieur.” Then, as it behoved 
him to be careful, the canary yellow of 
the cheaper “Levant;” and, finally, the 
sign manual of approaching destitution in 
the common brown wrapper of his ‘ ‘ Cap- 
oral.” I am inclined to say that I noticed 
his leisurely but inevitable descent of 
these pecuniary steps every month. 

Further, if moderately affluent, he would 
indulge in five sous’ worth of roasted 
chestnuts whenever we went out together, 
and only on one occasion did it occur to 
me to provide him with a tram fare. 
Despite this poverty, I am very sure that 
when he arranged ultimately, at my 
instance, to sit to Monsieur Dufour for 
his picture of “Christ led up into the 
Wilderness to be tempted of the Devil,” 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


27 


Wladislaw was very far from thinking of 
the remuneration. 

The fact was, he had differed rather 
pointedly with a big Russian at the even- 
ing class, a man preternaturally irritable 
because eternally afflicted by the tooth- 
ache; there had been words, the Russian 
had announced his intention of throwing 
the Pole from the top of the stairs, and, 
being a taller, more muscular fellow, had 
picked him up and carried him to the 
door, when Wladislaw wriggled dexter- 
ously from his grasp, and jerked him 
down no less than eleven steps upon his 
spine, describing to me afterwards with 
less truth than artistic sympathy the neat 
bobbing sound as each individual vertebra 
knocked upon the wooden stairs. 

This incident, and the fact that the 
Russian had taken an oath in public to 
pay his defeat a round dozen times, served 
to cool Wladislaw’s interest in the evening 
class. He told me also that the light 
tried his eyes ; and he would come up in 
the morning with a fine vermilion point 
in their corners, the result, as I insisted, 
of his dipping locks of hair. 


28 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


With a choice of reasons for his going, 
I was yet surprised when he came, late 
one evening, and, having whistled the 
opening bars of Chopin’s ‘‘Dirge of Po- 
land” below my seventh floor window, 
decoyed me to the roadway, and described 
his flrst visit to the studio of Dufour in 
the Due Yaugirard. 

Out of mere curiosity we had wandered 
to the number, one afternoon after the 
reception of the letter ; and I well remem- 
bered the living stench of the impasse, 
the dead trails of an enterprising Virginia 
creeper, the broken mass of plaster casts 
which sufiiciently located a young sculptor 
near at hand, and the cracked Moorish 
lamp which lay upon its side in the half- 
choked drain. All we had seen of the 
studio’s furnishings was the silk-threaded 
back of a magniflcent curtain which 
blocked an upper square of lights ; but 
I knew that inside all must be on a much 
greater scale of artistic beauty than the 
queer, draughty barns of art-student 
friends, where I often juggled with a cup 
of tea ; — tea produced from a corner, 
shrouded modestly in the green canvas 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


29 


covering of a French waggon and the 
dusty, bellying folds of a brown fishing- 
net. I was now to hear from Wladislaw 
what the interior was really like; how 
the great Dufour appeared when seen 
from the front instead of the rear, so to 
say, and upon what terms the negotia- 
tions were begun. 

A certain indecisiveness in Wladislaw’s 
painting was reflected in his conversation : 
he never could describe anything. Perhaps 
this is to do him an injustice ; I had 
rather say that he had no idea of giving 
a detailed description. By whiles you 
might get a flash equivalent to one of 
his illuminative brush strokes, which was 
very certain to be an unsurpassable 
appreciation of the fact or the circum- 
stances ; but bid him begin at the be- 
ginning and go coolly to the end, and you 
had him useless, flurried, monosyllabic, and 
distraught. 

I had early learned this ; so I stood 
pretty patiently, although in thin slippers, 
on our half-made road, a red clay slough 
by reason of much carting, and listened 
to half-intelligible fragments of bad 


30 


Wladislaw’s A'dvent 


German, from which I gleaned quite a 
good deal that I wanted to know. First 
of all, it seemed the studio had another 
door ; one we had never seen ; you made 
your way round the back of the sculptor’s 
white powdery habitation, and discovered 
yourself opposite a little annexe where 
the artist kept his untidier properties 
and the glass and china which served for 
any little refreshment he might be dis- 
posed to take in working hours. The door 
here had been opened by an untidy, half- 
dressed Frenchwoman, with her boots un- 
buttoned and a good deal of cigarette ash 
upon her high-braced bust ; she appeared 
unaware of Wladislaw’s arrival, for she 
came to the door to empty something, and 
he nearly received the contents of a small 
enamelled tin thing in his face. 

A moment later, much shaken by the 
off-hand insolence of her remarks, he pene- 
trated to the presence of Dufour himself, 
and was agreeably soothed by the painter’s 
reception of him. Of Dufour’ s manner 
and remarks, or the appearance of his 
workshop, I could get no idea. He had a 
canvas, nine feet by five, upon an easel, 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


31 


and it seems lie made a rapid croquis of 
liis picture upon a smaller upright, and 
had a few masterly skirmishes with the 
fusain for position of his Christ’s head, 
begging the model to walk naturally up 
and down the studio, so as to expose 
unconsciously various attitudes of face. 

During these saunterings Wladislaw 
should have come by some idea of his 
surroundings ; but he was continually 
harassed and distracted by the move- 
ments of the woman in the unbuttoned 
boots, and seemed to have observed very 
little. 

Upon a high point of an easel was 
hung a crown of thorns, and beside this 
leaned a reed ; but Dufour explained that 
he had abandoned that more conventional 
incident in favour of the Temptation in 
the Wilderness, and explained at some 
length the treatment that he contem- 
plated of the said Temptation. Nothing, 
of course, was to be as it had ever been 
before ; the searching light of modem 
thought, of modern realism, was to be let 
in upon this old illustration, from which 
time had worn the sharpness long ago. 


32 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


“They must feel it; it must come right 
down to them — to their lives ; they must 
find it in their path as they walk — irrefut- 
able, terrible — and the experience of any 
one of them!’’ Dufour had said. “And 
for that, contrast! You have here the 
simplicity of the figure ; the man white, 
assured, tense, unassailable. Then, here 
and there, around and above, the thousand 
soft presentments of temptation. And 
these, though imaginatively treated, are 
to be real — real. He was a man ; they 
say He had a man’ s temptations ; but 
where do we really hear of them? You 
will see them in my picture ; all that has 
ever come to you or me is to be there. 
Etherealised, lofty, deified, but . . . our 
temptations.” 

“And you see what a subject? The 
advantages, the opportunities? The melt- 
ing of the two methods? The plein air 
for the figure, and all that Art has ever 
known or imagined outside this world — 
everything a painter’s brain has ever seen 
in dreams — for the surroundings. Is it to 
be great? Is it to be final? Ah, you 
shall see! And yours is the face of all 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


33 


the world for it. Yon are a re-incarnation. 
One moment so. I must have the head 
trois quarts with the chin raised.” 

Dufonr talked himself to perspiration, 
so Wladislaw said, and even I at third 
hand was warmed and elated. 

Surely it was a striking achievement. 
I don’t think it occurred to me then 
to reflect how large a practice Dufour 
had had with the “temptations” realistic- 
ally treated ; certainly he had a name for 
the painting of them which no one could 
outdo ; and if his new departure from 
the direction of gas and limelight to 
plein air went well, there was every- 
thing to hope. 

“And when are you to go again?” I 
asked, as I scraped the clay from my 
slippers on the wide door mat in the 
draughty entresol. 

“Not for three days; he goes out of 
town to Nancy. On Saturday night I 
go again, and am to pose in costume. 
He is to have me after, every night for 
a week, while he draws only, to choose 
his exact position ; after that, I have to 
give up some daylight ; but it won’t 
3 


34 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


matter, for I can join the evening class 
again for black and white. I have often 
thought of it, and meant to.” 

“And you don’t think it is going to 
tire you horribly — standing and not say- 
ing anything ? ’ ’ 

“Tire? Nothing could tire me. I will 
pose on one leg for him like a stork, for 
hours at a time, and never complain.” 

“I don’t think it likely that a position 

of that kind ” I began ; but he struck 

in : 

“But not if that woman is about: 
she makes me nervous. You should see 
her hands : they are all white and 
swollen. When I ran a thorn in my 
thumb and it swelled, it went like that 
all dead and cooked-looking.” 

“Don’t!” I shouted. “Of course she 
won’t be there. It isn’t likely he would 
have a servant about when he worked.” 

“She isn’t a servant; she called him 
‘Toni,’ and she took hold ” 

“She was a model^^^ I said ; and Wladis- 
law, who was so headlong because so 
very young, heard the note of finality in 
my voice, and, looking puzzled but com- 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


35 


plaisantj reserved further comment on 
the woman in the unbuttoned boots. 
****** 

All that follows this, I am unable to 
tell in Wladislaw’s own words ; the facts 
were not given me at one, nor yet at 
two, recitals — they were piled hetero- 
geneously in my mind, just as he told 
them at odd moments in the months that 
followed, and that they have arranged 
themselves with some sort of order is to 
be accounted for first of all by their 
dramatic nature, and secondly by the 
inherent habit of my memory, which 
often straightens and adjusts, although 
unbidden, all that is thrown into it, so 
that I may take things out neatly as I 
would have them : so one may pick 
articles, ordered in one’s absence, from 
the top left-hand drawer in a dressing- 
table. 

At half-past eight upon the Sunday it 
was a very black night indeed in the 
Rue Yaugirard. Wladislaw had well-nigh 
fallen prone over the broken Moorish 
lamp, now frozen firmly in the gutter 
which was the centre of the impasse; 


36 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


he had made his way round by the 
sculptor’s studio, found the door un- 
» locked, and, being of a simple, unques- 
tioning temperament, strolled into the 
untidy, remote little annexe which com- 
municated by a boarded passage with the 
handsome atelier, 

A small tin lamp of the kind a con- 
cierge usually carries, glassless, flaming at 
a cotton wick with aleool d hruler, was 
withstanding an intermittent buffeting 
by a wind, which knew the best hole in 
the window to come in at. Wladislaw 
nearly lost half of his long light brown 
moustache by lighting his cigarette at 
it in a draught. 

It was cold, and he had to undress to 
his skin ; the comfort of a cigarette was 
not to be denied. Also he was late for 
his appointment, and this annoyed him. 
He picked up the lamp when he had 
taken coat and cap off, and searched 
for the costume he was to wear. 

A row of pegs upon the wall offered 
encouragement. With a certain awkward- 
ness, which was the result of his shyness 
of touching unfamiliar garments, he 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


37 


knocked down two kats — women’s hats: 
one a great scooped thing with red roses 
below the rim ; the other like a dish, 
with green locusts, horribly life-like (and 
no wonder, since they were the real 
insects) crawling over it. He hastily re- 
placed these, and took np a white thing 
on another nail which might have been 
the scant robe he was to wear. 

It was fine and soft to his hand ; it 
exhaled an ineffable perfume of a sort 
ol sweetness which belonged to no three- 
franc bottle, and had loose lace upon it 
and ribbons. He dropped this upon the 
ground, thinking shudder! ngly of the 
woman in the unbuttoned boots. At last 
he came upon the garment he was to 
wear ; it seemed to him that he knew 
it at once when he touched it : it was 
of a thick, coarse, resistent woollen fabric, 
perhaps mohair, with a dull shine in the 
rather unwilling folds ; there was very 
little stuff in it — just a narrow, poor 
garment, and of coarse white ; wool- white. 
Wladislaw wondered vaguely where Dufour 
could have come by this wonderfully 
archaic material, ascetic even to the touch. 


38 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


Then he sat down upon a small disused 
stove and took off his boots and socks. 
Still hanging upon the nail was a rope 
cord, frayed rather and of hemp, hand- 
twisted. That was the whole costume ; 
the robe and the cord. 

He was out of his shirt and ready to 
put on the Hebrew dress, when he was 
arrested again by some half thought in 
his mind, and stood looking at it as it 
lay thrown across a heap of dusty toiles. 
It seemed so supremely real a thing — just 
what The Man must have worn ; he 
could imagine the old story more nearly 
than ever he had done before. 

He could see Him, His robes of red or 
purple laid aside, clothed only in the 
white under - garment : the beautiful 
purity, the unimpeachable holiness of 
Him only the greater to see ; young, 
perfect, without sin or soil ; the veritable 
“Jesus led up of the Spirit into the 
wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” 

And he, himself, Wladislaw, was the 
true image of that grand figure as He 
has come down through all the histories 
to the eyes of an indifferent world. 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


39 


When he lifted his hand to his head, 
bewildered and held by it, the old blue 
trousers fell to the ground, and he stood 
there naked in the cold, taking his mind 
back along the familiar lines of the 
wonderful story, entering into the feelings 
of that Jew-Man who was persecuted ; 
who, whether God or only man, lived the 
noblest life, left the finest example — who 
walks to-day as He did then, beside the 
few who may be called His disciples. 

A blast that caught the little lamp 
full in its foul, yellow flame tongue left 
Wladislaw in the dark. He felt about 
for matches ; perhaps no act could so 
certainly have restored him to this 
world, from which his thoughts had 
wandered. He found none anywhere. 
His straying hand came upon the 
garment ; he caught it up and slipped 
it over his head, half horrified to feel 
that it came below his collarbone in 
the neck, and left his arms with only 
a dozen inches of sleeve. 

Matches were lurking in his trousers 
pocket, and he had the sulphury splutter 
going in a moment and the lamp re-lit. 


40 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


Turning to place it in a quieter corner, 
he faced a dusty square of looking-glass, 
unframed, such as painters usually have, 
its edges sunk into the dusty wall ; he 
had quite a surprise to see himself. 

More than half fascinated, he made a 
swift arrangement of his hair, smoothed 
the soft flow of his moustache and beard, 
knotted the rope cord round his waist, 
and stood there only a second or two 
longer. Then, nerved by the startling 
simplicity, the convincing faithfulness of 
his whole appearance, he opened the door 
and went down the passage to the studio, 
frowning and stepping gingerly on the 
cold boards. 

****** 

The curious murmur of sounds that 
struck his ear ; voices, the music of 
glasses and silver, the slap, as it might 
have been a hand upon a cheek, and the 
vagrant notes of some untuned musical 
instrument— these all he barely noticed, or 
supposed they came from the sculptor’s 
adjacent studio. 

He opened the door and brushed aside 
the dark portiere that screened out 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


41 


draughts ; he stepped into the studio, 
into a hot, overcharged air, thick with 
the flat smell of poured wines and fruit 
rind, coloured with smoke, poisoned with 
scent, ringing harshly to voices — an air 
that of itself, and if he had seen nothing, 
would have nauseated him. 

He saw dimly, confusedly ; orange and 
yellow blobs of light seemed to be swing- 
ing behind grey-blue mists that rolled and 
eddied round the heads of people so wild, 
he did not know if he looked at a dream 
picture, a picture in a bad dream. If he 
made another step or two and stood, his 
arms straight at his sides, his head up, 
his long eyes glaring beneath drawn 
perplexed brows, he did not know it. 
There was a sudden pause, as though by 
a chemical process the air had been 
purged of sounds. Then a confused yell 
burst from among the smoke clouds, mixed 
with the harsh scrape of chairs shot 
back upon the floor ; that too, ceased, 
and out of the frozen horror of those 
halted people, some incoherent, hysteric 
whimpering broke out, and a few faint 
interrupted exclamations. 


42 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


At a table heaped with the debris of a 
careless feast, he saw Dufour, his coat off, 
his waistcoat and shirt unbuttoned, his 
head rolled weakly back upon the gilded 
wood-scroll of his Louis Quinze chair : his 
face flushed and swollen, strangely broad- 
ened, coarsened, and undone, with sick, 
loose expressions rolling over it as shallow 
water rolls above a stone ; he had in his 
hands an old lute, a studio property, from 
which he had been picking poor detached, 
discordant notes. 

There were other men, with wild ar- 
rested merriment in their faces, the merri- 
ment of licence. Mixed among them, 
tangling like the serpents and reptiles 
in an allegorical picture, were women of 
whom the drapery or the bareness seemed 
indifferently lewd. 

One had fainted with a glass at her lips, 
and the splash of spilled liquor was on 
her neck and dripping from her chin. No 
one heeded her. 

Another had dashed her head upon the 
table, her hands were clutched in her hair, 
shaking with a palsy of terror ; and from 
her arose the sobs which were no more 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


43 


than the dull moaning of a beast in 
labour. 

One other, in a dress all Paris would 
have recognised as being the orange ballet 
muslins in which Dufour had painted his 
celebrated Coquelicot,” was lying with 
long white arms spread on the back of 
a chair; above her low black satin bodice 
the waves of her dead-white breast were 
heaving convulsively ; her red hair blazed 
from under the live fantastic orange 
poppy, horns that spread out from her 
head ; her clever, common little face was 
twitching to recover a vinous courage, the 
black eyes were blinking, the crooked 
lines of her mouth — more fascinating than 
any fancied bow-curve — were moving in 
irresponsible striving to open on one side, 
as they had a habit of doing, and let out 
some daring phrase. 

All that they saw, these miserable revel- 
lers, was the white figure of the Christ 
standing in the chastened light of the far 
end of the studio. There had been a 
slight rattling sound — a curtain had been 
drawn, and then the beautiful form had 
stepped out and stood before them — the 


44 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


very type of manliood Christ had chosen, 
if pictures may be trusted, when He came 
to this earth : the pure forehead, the 
patient sorrowful eyes, reproach in the ex- 
pression of the eyebrows and the mouth, 
the young beard and brown soft hair — in 
a word, the Nazarene. 

When Dufour raised a wavering arm, 
and, with a smile of drunken intelligence, 
exclaimed, ‘‘Ah, c’est mon Jesus Christ! 
Bonsoir, Monsieur I ” a renewed shiver of 
apprehension went round among the 
madly frightened people. Then he’ rose, 
throwing off a cowering woman, stagger- 
ing a little, holding to his chair, and 
turned to address to his guests a mock 
speech of introduction : — 

“ Mesdames et Messieurs, je vous presente 
mon modMe, 1’ excellent Ladislas ! ’ ’ 

When he had declaimed thus, rising 
superior to a thickened stammer, “La 
Coquelicotte,” as the orange lady had at 
once been named, bounded from her chair 
with a scream. It was the signal for a 
lightning change of emotion ; the hysterics 
rose to an abandoned shout of uncon- 
trollable laughter ; the moaning woman 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


45 


raised her head ; the men banged the 
table and exclaimed according to their 
mood. One caught a handful of green 
stuff from a vase that had already been 
knocked over, and dashed them to the 
ground in front of the rock-still white 
figure. The dark-haired woman — Wladis- 
law had not recognized her, and she wore 
shoes this time — laid her swollen hand 
upon Dufour’s shoulder and cried harshly, 

Va, Toni ! Monsieur a besoin d’un ane ! ” 

More screams greeted this pleasantry, 
and ‘‘La Coquelicotte ” flew towards the 
figure with a jpas de cancan; one arm 
tightened round his neck like a lasso. 

Then his frozen quiet left him ; there 
was a sort of fight between them. 

An oath in his own tongue burst from 
him, but she twisted her fingers below 
his arms and dragged him towards the 
table, meeting every effort at resistance 
with a kiss. His head swam as he saw 
her face come close to him, its crooked 
mouth open, and the blank in her line of 
even teeth w^hich was supposed to be a 
charm ; her coarse hair seemed to singe 
his neck as it brushed upon him, and in 


46 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


a moment he was pushed into a chair at 
the table and received a handful of red 
rose-petals in his face from a woman 
opposite. 

Dufour was murmuring some apologies 
about forgetting the appointment. . He 
had been away ; had come back in time 
for this supper, long arranged — a farewell 
to his old manner and his old loves ; but 
Wladislaw barely listened. When ‘‘La 
Coquelicotte ” sat upon his knee, he 
threatened to strike her, and then be- 
thought him with shame that she was a 
woman. 

He took a glass that was pushed to 
him, and drank to steady himself. It 
was Chartreuse they had given him — 
Chartreuse, more deadly and more in- 
sidious than pure spirit — and in a very 
little while his head failed him, and he 
remembered nothing after. Perhaps it 
was as well. The wild laughter and 
indecent jokes surged up hotter than 
before ; every one strove to forget the 
stun of that terrible moment, when, at 
the jarring scrape of the curtain rings 
upon their rod, the white figure of the 


Wladislaw’s Advent 


47 


Christ had interrupted them ; when it 
had seemed, indeed, that the last day 
had come, that judgment and retribution, 
harsher than all hell to those taken in 
their sinning, had fallen on them as they 
shrieked and howled like human swine 
amid the refuse of their feast. 

That was a moment they never forgot. 
It carried no lesson, it gave no warning, 
it altered notliing, and was of no use ; 
but it frightened them, and they were 
not strong enough to wipe out its cold 
memory. 

There is perhaps a moral in Wladislaw’s 
story ; if so, I have had no thought to 
write it. Certainly the world has turned 
and made mock, like those men and 
women, at the Christ-figure ; and as I 
write, I find myself wondering about the 
great promise which is still the Hope of 
some. 

When He comes, if He is to come, wiU 
it be upon some such scene that He will 
choose to enter? 



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THE HINT O’ HAIRST 


I 

“ It’s dowie in the hint o’ hairst, 

At the wa’gang o’ the swallow, 

When the winds blow cauld and the burns grow bauld, 
And the woods are hingin’ yellow. ” * 

Lady Gordoit was sitting in the drawing- 
room, beside the large centre window ; 
she was looking out on the garden, 
which the last week of a late Scotch 
summer made very warm and full of 
colour; but she did not see the Canter- 
bury bells set out like cups and saucers 
of different tea-sets in all their precious 
varieties, and she did not notice the tall 
perfection of the single dahlias. Her 
face was lightly drawn in lines of per- 
plexity, great distress, and indecision ; 
the eyes always looked out from a con- 
sciousness of continual sorrow, but just 

* “It’s dowie in the hint o’ hairst,” i.e., “It’s sad at 
the end of autumn.” 


52 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


now there was all the added stress of a 
fresh difficulty. Rose Gordon was lean- 
ing against the back of a chair, her hands 
behind her, her whole figure rocking 
now and then upon one heel ; she had 
an expression of severe disapproval, of 
disgust even ; she was, in fact, angry. 

“Well but, mamma, if you would speak 
to him,’’ she said very emphatically. “He 
should be told ! It is nonsense letting 
him go on like this ; and besides,” with 
added heat, “it is very unfair! It reflects 
upon you, upon me, and Willie — the 
family. It is simply shameful — and very 
little money would put it right 1 ” 

Lady Gordon shook her head. “My 
dear,” she said, “ we are so poor.” 

“Poor? But not so poor as all that! 
Of course, I know that we are poor — and 
I know why,” with a lightning flash of 

her eyes. “John But there is no use 

going into that ! Still, it would not cost 
much to mend the roof a little ; and 
certainly the expenses of sending Lament 
to the infirmary must be paid.” 

Rose set the chair down, and began 
pulling some dead roses out of a bowl on 


The Hint o' Hairst 


53 


the table with fingers thrilled by the 
feelings this subject always roused. 
“What I feel is this,” *she burst out 
suddenly; “John may be ill — of course 
I know he is ; but he can occupy his 
mind with newspapers, he can talk 
politics, he can play ecarte for hours — 
why can he not listen to a single word 
about the condition of his tenants, why 
must one always ? ” 

A manservant came into the room, and 
Rose stopped abruptly and bent over the 
roses. 

“ Sir John would like to speak to you, 
my lady.” 

“At once, Jeffreys? Very well. I will 
come.” Lady Gordon got up, and the man 
waited to let her pass in front of him ; 
but Rose intervened. 

“Say that her ladyship will be there in 
a few minutes,” she said, in her rather 
imperious way. “Mamma, do wait a 
moment !” She ran to the door and shut 
it. “Now is your opportunity; do put it 
to him. Mrs Lamont is waiting in the 
servants’ hall ; I will go to her and say 
that you are speaking to John about it, 


54 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


and then yon will send down a message.” 
Rose opened the door for her mother. 

“Well, my dear, I will see! — It depends 
how he is, you know.” The poor worried 
lady hurried across the hall and down 
the corridor that led to her eldest son’s 
rooms. 

Rose brought her brows sharply to- 
gether and expressed a little vexed breath ; 
she did not go oft* at once to Mrs Lamont 
in the servants’ hall ', she stood there 
thinking and considering, always with 
the same indignation against her brother 
John. The wide outer door was just 
opposite her, with its steps down to the 
gravel sweep. Some one was coming up 
these steps, and a dog flung itself against 
the glass door, which, not always perfect- 
•ly closed, would give way against an 
attack of this kind and admit “Kate,” 
Willie Gordon’s black spaniel, into the 
house. 

Rose went to meet her second brother. 
She was too pre-occupied to ask him what 
luck he had, as she was usually ready 
enough to do, and she hardly watched 
him even when he pulled a hare out of 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


55 


one of his big sportsman’s pockets and 
two golden plovers from the other. 

“Missed the finest duck Tve ever 
seen,” he said, beginning a little game 
with Kate and the two plovers. “ Such 
plumage ! — that was you, you silly little 
idiot” : giving Kate a tap on the side of 
the head with the plover, and looking at 
her with the most affectionate smile at 
the same time. ‘ ‘ What do you think the 
brute did?” continued Willie, with the 
eagerness of all sportsmen to recount their 
exploits. 

“What?” said Kose, sitting on the top 
step and passing her finger softly down 
the plover’s lovely breast, as her face 
cleared of its last annoyance, and despite 
herself she became full of interest. 
Willie, however, was quick to notice that 
she was more silent than usual. 

“ I say ! — Anything happened — ^h’m ?” 

“Ko !— Oh, I declare. I’m forgetting poor 
Mrs Lamont all this time.” 

“What about Mrs Lamont ?” 

“Only that poor Lamont is to go to 
the infirmary ; it is his only chance ! 
Dr Herries says it is a very poor one; 


56 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


and think of it, Willie, there are seven 
children and poor Mrs Lamont ” 

“I know, I know!” said her brother, 
frowning and tattooing on the barrel of 
his gun. 

“ And if only things had been taken in 
time. But you know how he slept in that 
damp down-stairs room all winter ; by 
my advice, for I thought it would kill 
the children.” 

‘‘They’d have been much better able to 
bear it,” Willie Grordon said in an absent- 
minded way. 

“Well, his lungs are terribly affected, 
I am sure. Then he has been out of 
work since before haying- time, and they 
have been fearfully poor ; she could earn 
so little; and I know they haven’t had 
enough to eat, and now he has something 
the matter with his leg ; — Oh, it is a dread- 
ful business.” 

Willie drew a long, very deep breath, 
flung his head up and looked away out 
to the hills, frowns fleeting across his 
brow more quickly than the little clouds 
sailed over those blue points. 

“And Mrs Lamont has come up to see 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


57 


if we can help her about sending the poor 
Ulan to the infirmary ; mamma is with John 

now ; I begged her to speak to him ” 

‘‘ A lot of good that will do ! ” 

Well — wdiere are you going ? ” 

‘‘Round to the stables”; and Willie 
Grordon put his gun on his shoulder, 
caught up his game, whistled to Kate, 
and strode off frowning. Rose did not 
wonder that he gave her no sympathy, 
that he had not more to say ; poor fellow, 
she knew that it was worse for him 
even than for her, for he could do 
nothing ; he, who was a man and hale 
and strong, had to stay there calmly on 
the property that had always been the 
Gordons, and see the slow ruin creep 
over wood and village ; trees cut down 
and sold, land undrained and left a useless 
marsh, and the poor village a perfect 
fever-bed, raked at sudden intervals by 
disease and death. 

And he, a second son, could do nothing ! 
Willie Gordon was twenty-six, and as 
full of energy as a man of perfect consti- 
tution should be : to live on at Foresk 
House from day to day, shooting, fishing, 


58 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


pottering ronnd his little den in the 
garden, did not give occupation enough 
for Willie Gordon. And yet he could not 
leave Foresk on account of the delicacy 
of his elder brother. 

His presence was chiefly of use to 
cheer his mother and sister ; they felt 
their burden less when Willie was there 
to share it, to talk about it, to speak 
hopefully now and then. 

But his position was a very difficult one, 
and he did not consider himself fitted 
for it ; he was not a miracle of saintly 
patience ; he was constantly irritated and 
chafed at the contempt he was obliged 
to feel for his brother. 

John had been twenty- four when he 
came to the title ; the head of a particu- 
lary fast set of men at Cambridge, his 
degree was a matter of small importance 
to him, yet he got it within three months 
of his father’s death, and came home to 
Foresk to await the commencement of 
the shooting season. He was handsome, 
and when everything fell out to please 
him, he was good-natured ; but he was 
also abnormally selflsh, and incapable of 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


59 


the smallest sacrifice ; and, what was 
worst of all, imbued with a mean and 
sceptical view of human nature, which 
led him to suspect every one of in- 
terested motives, and believe nobody 
incorruptible, nobody single-minded. In 
the spring-time he left Foresk rather 
suddenly with the intention of going 
abroad : and facts which came to light 
after his departure fully explained its 
abruptness. 

Sir John went to Monaco, and none of 
the pains and pleasures of gaming passed 
him by ; from that point his career may 
be imagined ; the description of its details 
could serve no purpose, and would be 
only painful. He was a young man of 
great personal attractions and irredeem- 
ably ignoble nature ; his selfishness was 
phenomenal, his vice little less ; he wrecked 
the fortunes of the family in six years of 
unbridled extravagance, and he came home 
at the age of thirty to settle down.” 

Yes, thought his mother, he is coming- 
home ; these endless calls for money, of 
which she had heard vaguely from their 
solicitor, but of whose extent she had not 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


60 . 

the slightest idea, would cease ; perhaps it 
was to prepare her for the possibility of 
another Lady Grordon that he was coming, 
and at this notion her heart felt lighter 
than it had done for many a day. 

Rose was glad to hear of her brother’s 
advent ; only Willie, then a great, strong 
fellow of four-and-twenty, looked rather 
grave. 

Sir John came ; he was five days 
making the journey between London and 
Scotland, and a telegram arrived on the 
day he was expected, to say he was 
passing the night in the country town 
and would arrive at noon next day. 

Why was he pausing on the very 
threshold of his home ? 

Rose drove the phaeton to meet him on 
the lovely morning of his arrival, and was 
amazed to see him come out of the 
station leaning heavily on his servant’s 
arm. 

“ Here you are ! Well, I am glad. — Why, 
John, you’ve had an accident, that’s why 
you stopped on the way. Ah ! ” 

Nonsense ; nothing of the kind ! Don’t 
make a fuss ! Why have you brought 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


61 


that thing? Where do you expect me to 
sit in it ? ” 

^ ‘ It’ s such a lovely day, I thought 

Why, you’ll sit here ; or you can drive, 
if you care to ” 

‘‘Drive? Of course not! Well, I sup- 
pose I shall have to make the best of it, 
as it’s all there is : help me up, Jeffreys.” 

It was quite a business to get Sir John 
propped up with air-cushions in the front 
seat of the low pony-carriage, and he 
complained bitterly of the roughness of 
“ these confounded Scotch roads.” 

“It’s your own road,” said Rose coolly, 
“and you can have it re-laid if you 
please.” And that was all she said. 

Lady Gordon was at the front door 
when they drove up ; they had seen her 
handkerchief waving between certain 
groups of trees in the avenue. This 
annoyed Sir John very much ; his mother 
would see his laboured descent from the 
carriage, and he would have to go 
through the same scrutiny he had en- 
dured from Rose — only worse. 

It was very much the same thing, only 
that Lady Gordon caught sight of his 


62 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


face, a face whose lines, colour, and ex- 
pression told one story with terrible 
plainness ; and the shock to her heart 
was such that not many words came. 

He had to submit to being kissed, wept 
over, and commiserated ; he had to hear, 
worst of all ! — how soon the air of Foresk 
would set him up again — knowing all the 
while that he deserved no pity, and that 
no air would ever set him up. 

His brother came into the room. 

Sir John was by this time sunk in a 
library chair, his air-cushions deftly ar- 
ranged by Jeffreys, and a glass of sherry 
in his shaking hand. 

Willie, in leggings, big boots, and shoot- 
ing-clothes made of home-woven wools, 
stood and looked at the worn, ruined, 
old-young man who was his brother. 
Sir John was in tweeds ; a travelling suit 
of the most towny appearance ; his face, 
which took a bluish- violet in the shadows, 
was in sharp contrast to the would-be 
morning-in-th e-country air of his striped 
shirt ; his eyes, pale and sunken, strangely 
worsened in expression, strangely tragic 
in their indication of his character, met 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


63 


the clear, steady glance of his brother 
— a grave, long glance on Willie’s part. 

‘^Well, old man, and how are you?” 
cried Sir John, with affected heartiness. 

Oh, I’m all right ! ” said Willie curtly. 
‘‘ Why didn’t you come on last night ? ” 

Sir John laughed nervously, irritably, 
but with a simulation of amusement. 

‘‘My dear fellow, let me explain for 
the third time! I haven’t been very fit 
lately, and travelling tires me ; so I put 
up at the Forfochan Arms^ a most con- 
foundedly uncomfortable hole, and came 
on to-day.” 

Such was Sir John’s home-coming. 
Before he had been a week in the house 
the truth came to Lady Gordon, first 
about the money affairs, then about her 
son’s health. 

He had three rooms arranged for his 
use, and he lived apart from his family, 
having his meals, such as they were, at 
his own hours. He had ruined himself in 
every way, and was head over ears in 
debt. 


That had all been two years ago. 


64 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


Willie had since finished his College 
course and returned to Foresk ; there was 
nothing else for him to do. 

He had stood by and seen his brother’s 
tempers ; known him when a few days’ 
health led him to believe that in time 
his constitution would be built up again 
and he be able to fare once more into 
that world which was the only place 
that never seemed to weary him ; had 
seen him again when he crawled back 
to convalescence after an acute spell of 
illness, using his first free breath to curse 
his “luck.” He had also stood by when 
racing debts — for Sir John still followed 
with interest the fortunes of certain 
stables — had to be paid out of money 
which should certainly have been applied 
to the improvement of the estate. 

And Willie had no power of his own ; 
he had to stay and calmly see money 
scattered when half the sum would have 
enabled Sir John to do his duty as a 
proprietor and care for the well-being of 
his tenants : and he could say nothing — 
nothing, at least, that was listened to ; 
and he could do nothing, nothing of any 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


65 


practical value ; and he could earn nothing 
on his own account. There never was 
a young fellow in more irksome circum- 
stances than Willie Grordon. 

He had left his sister to go to the stable, 
he said ; on his way there he met an 
under-gardener and gave him his gun 
and game to take to the house ; then, his 
hands thrust deep in his pockets and 
Kate at his heels, he walked down one 
of the wood-paths, stepped over the wire- 
fencing that enclosed the immediate 
policies, and took his way towards the 
river. 

He could do no good at home ; it wanted 
an hour and a-half till dinner-time, and 
another of those painful scenes with 
his mother or Hose was a thing to be 
avoided. 

It was as well to spare himself the 
useless chafing of it. He went on his way 
then, whistling more and more and frown- 
ing less. The path, little used save daily 
by two labourers whose homes lay in the 
direction he was going, led straight to 
the river whirling on its rock-laid way, 
and the hill-slope was covered with nut- 
5 


66 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


bushes, small oaks, larches, and silver 
birch ; the colouring was not so fine as it 
would be in three weeks’ time, but there 
was never a day in the year when these 
woods were not beautiful. 

Now and again, through the trees, 
Willie got a glimpse of a house, and it 
seemed he knew the points from which 
these peeps were to be had, for he looked 
up and paused a little whenever he came 
to one. It was a house that stood on a 
barish, raised table-land across the river ; 
it was the Manse of Ardlach, where lived 
Mr. Lockhart, the Free Church minister, 
and his wife and daughter. 

The Gordons were Roman Catholics, 
and they knew very little of the Manse 
people. Rose and Aveline Lockhart knew 
each other by sight, but they had never 
spoken, and it had never occurred to them 
to be friendly ; their ways were separate, 
and the distinct effort it would have re- 
quired to bring them together was never 
made by either. Willie knew Miss 
Lockhart, and their acquaintance had 
come about in an informal way which 
took nothing from the pleasantness of it: 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


67 


she had been walking in the woods when 
he was shooting, and an incident, trifling 
but suflicient, had arisen which brought 
them into conversation. 

Aveline was a girl who would have 
been remarkable in any ball-room for the 
very uncommon charm of her appearance 
— perhaps she gained a great deal by not 
being in a ball-room at all, but only in 
a wild Scotch wood all green with the 
first passion of spring-time. 

Very often since then she and Willie 
Gordon had come across one another, 
and nearly always in that tract of wood- 
land between her home and the wild river. 
She liked to sit upon the bank and watch 
it raging at the base of some detached 
rock ; she liked it to roar at the very 
loudest; but at the quieter parts, where 
yet was always the steady hum of its 
current, she could see the trout leap, and 
send her fresh voice echoing up the hill- 
slopes in one or other of the sweet old 
ballads that she loved. 

Hers was too wholesome a nature 'ever 
to have found life dull at Ardlach ; but 
her friendship with Willie Gordon — a 


68 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


friendship of that kind that has a world 
of undeclared love just pent behind the 
lips or half acknowledged in the heart 
—added immeasurably to the happiness of 
her days. 

At the beginning of life, twenty soul- 
white years behind her, she was ready 
to be loved ; and Willie would have told 
her so, but many things hindered him : 
his life was too unsettled a thing to share 
with any girl ; his home was not the 
place to bring a wife to ; he could not 
marry in his brother’s lifetime, and Sir 
John might linger on for years. No— he 
could not ask her for her love ; and, in 
the meantime, this very humble young 
man comforted himself with the considera- 
tion that by never putting the question, 
he spared himself the pain of a possible 
refusal. 

He had her friendship, and he could 
love her as much as he pleased ; or rather, 
he could not kelp loving her with all 
his strength, for that was the only way 
he could understand loving. 

And now he was at the brink of the 
impatient river. A hundred yards farther 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


69 


on he heard a voice singing — Aveline’s 
voice ; he had heard the song before 
snrely, bnt never before from her. 

He went near enough to catch the words, 
and the sound of the river covered his 
footsteps. 

“ Willie’s fair, and Willie’s rare, 

And Willie’s wondrous bonnie ! . . 

She was sitting on a mossy bank, with 
her back against a silver birch, all her 
fair hair, the colour of pale starshine, ray- 
ing out from her head, her face wearing 
a strange expression as she sang ; her eyes 
looking straight across the river and a 
smile in them — yes, certainly, a smile. 

Now, how did that song go on ? 

Willie had heard Rose sing it — Rose, 
who sang sweetly enough, but not like 
Aveline. 

He leaned against a tree, gave a re- 
straining word to Kate, and thought 
steadily. 

Aveline hummed the tune right through 
again, leaning over towards the ground 
and seeming to collect something with 
her hands— mosses perhaps. 

Suddenly a real, deep blush came in 


70 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


Willie’s face and mounted well among his 
hair ; a half-laugh that was not, after all, 
anything so common as a laugh, seemed 
to well up from his very heart. His 
hand went up to his forehead absently, 
and his eyes darkened with so warm a 
glow that he could not see the world 
about him, but only another world that 
few can hope to see. 

He forgot Kate, but she followed him 
when he turned and went slowly back as 
he had come. 

He had remembered the words of that 
song, and they had told him a secret. 


II 

John Gordon was lying back in his com- 
plicated invalid chair, to which appliances 
of every kind were ingeniously fitted ; he 
was smoking a very small cream-coloured 
cigarette ; beside him, on one of the 
shelves attached to the chair, was a box 
of the same kind, aromatic, Russian, dainty 
in the extreme ; and a tall tumbler of 
some sparkling stuff, neither more nor 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


71 


less than the light, very dry champagne 
which was chiefly instrumental in keeping 
him in life, was within comfortable reach 
of his hand. 

Jeffreys was reading aloud from the 
columns of a pink paper; perhaps he did 
not read well, and Sir John may or may 
not have been interested; at any rate, he 
lay back with his eyes closed, and the 
veins in his thin lids were very blue and 
distinct ; he only opened his eyes when 
he felt for the tumbler, and they came 
as a surprise in his pale saffron face, for 
they were a light, limpid sort of blue. 
His moustache was very even upon his 
thin, much-curved lip, and, like his hair, 
was nearly black ; his nose, high and fine, 
a perfect aquiline, was too delicately cut 
for a man’s. His hands, one of his vani- 
ties, were too taper and pointed to be 
either honest or useful ; the veins came 
clearly through their transparent olive 
pallor, and had that light blue colour that 
was in his eyes. Sir John’s was a really 
remarkable face, having indeed a great 
deal of beauty, especially in the modelling 
of the features ; but it was as strikingly 


72 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


unpleasant as it was strikingly hand- 
some. 

A face never to be trusted, from which 
no good might be hoped. 

‘‘Read that over again, Jeffreys! I 
didn’t catch it ; you’ve such a confounded 
habit of mumbling,” he said, in his thin, 
refined, strangely musical voice. 

“His sire was the great Galopin, and he 
has many of the qualities of this famous 
stayer ; I heartily congratulate the Duke 

of on his purchase; he should be a 

decided advantage to the ducal stables, 
and I understand he is to be sent down 
at once,” the servant duly repeated; and 
a knock came to the door just as he 
concluded the passage. 

“Now, who on earth is this?” mur- 
mured Sir John fretfully as the door 
opened, and not even raising his eyes to 
look. 

“Mr William, sir,” said Jeffreys, and 
got out of his chair and waited with the 
paper in his hand. 

“I must beg of you not to distress me 
with any trivial matters,” Sir John began as 
his brother came into the room. “If you 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


73 


will chat peaceably, or have a hand at 
ecarte or something of that kind ; but 
otherwise — I have only just begun to 
recover from an attack from Rose, and 
Tm not prepared to endure a further 
edition.” 

“If you mean an appeal to you on 
behalf of any one, you needn’t alarm your- 
self,” said Willie dryly. “I know your 
feelings on the subject so thoroughly ” 

“Now this is what I simply cannot 
stand!” whined Sir John, turning his head 
to and fro on the cushions, as though in 
great nervous stress. 

“Master was very upset before dinner, 
sir, and he’ll have a worse night if he’s 
not calmed down,” Jeffreys whispered 
rapidly. 

“I have that letter of Thomson’s in my 
pocket ; you promised you would look into 
the matter. That’s all I wanted to speak 
about,” said Willie, looking over, from his 
post by the mantelpiece, from the servant 
to his brother. 

“Jeffreys, I will call you when I leave 
Sir John.” 

Jeffreys vanished into another room. 


74 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


“Well, I don’t think I can bear any 
scolding,” said the baronet with a little 
laugh; “and I am not in the humour for 
whining over the sufferings of perfectly 
healthy, sound-conditioned people, whose 
chief enjoyment is the hating of their 
richer neighbours.” 

“We may as well leave that alone in 
the meantime ; we aren’ t very likely to 
agree upon it. Here is Thomson’s letter.” 

“Don’t read it; I cannot stand their 
phraseology! What is his answer?” 

“It cannot be done; the money belongs 
to me and to Hose at our mother’s death, 
and neither you nor I can touch a far- 
thing of it, with or without her consent.” 

“ I cannot believe that Thomson has come 
to such an insane conclusion!” Sir John 
broke out violently. 

“Well, here it is in black and white. I 
told you that you could not possibly get 
the money, and it turns out that I am 
just as powerless : our mother cannot get 
it herself!” 

“There is just this about it, then! You 
must go to Edinburgh and see Thomson 
yourself ; I would have him here, but 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


75 


liis last visit was a trial of the keenest 
nature. You must tell him the affair 

point by point. I should be glad if you 
put yourself out of the question also” — 
Sir John’s ready sneer came into play — 
‘‘and represent matters from my point 
of view ; the money is certainly more 

yours than mine, but you can repay your- 
self out of the estate later. I cannot last 
more than a year ; Herries said as much 
this morning ; and though he no more 

understands me than that fool Hutchinson 
did, he isn’t so far out this time ! ” 

Willie frowned and moved his feet upon 
the rug. 

“Then you wish me to go to Edin- 
burgh ?” 

“And explain the real urgency of the 
matter— nothing else. To-morrow ? ” 

“ If you give me a cheque, I suppose so ; 
no, not to-morrow; next day.” 

“Very well then; now My God, 

what’s that ? ” 

The sudden cry brought Jeffreys on the 
scene at once. 

“Something touched my hand!” Sir 
John went on, in high nervous alarm. 


76 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


“It’s Kate! She followed me into the 
room, I suppose,” Willie explained, with 
his eye upon the spaniel, whose icy nose, 
thrust, with overweening confidence, into 
Sir John’s moist, delicate hand, was the 
cause of excitement. 

“Kick the brute out at once!” shouted 
Sir John, with an oath. “How can you 
be so inconsiderate as to bring it when 
you know the state of my head ? ” 

“Sorry you were startled,” Willie said 
quickly. “I left her with Hose; but she 
always sneaks about at my heels. I will 
say good-night, as that business is settled ; 
you can let me know if you have any 
other commissions.” 

He left Sir John deep in his tumbler 
of champagne, and strolled out upon the 
lawm, filling his pipe and talking to Kate 
as he went. 

A few minutes later he tapped on the 
drawing-room window. 

Hose was sitting with her mother, and 
came at once to speak to him. He was 
leaning up against the stone sill, his thin 
black coat open, his hands in his pockets, 
and his fine face lit with an unconscious 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


77 


smile. He had asked her for her Scotch 
song-book, and she brought it him. 

“What do you want it for?” she said, 
still holding it, and prepared to look up 
anything he named. 

“Give it me a moment. I want to see 
the second verse of a song I know ; I 
think it’s in this.” And he strolled away 
with the book, and flung himself on the 
damp garden seat while he turned up the 
index. He came on it at once ; the ardent 
Kate leaped up beside him and pushed 
her fat body close to his arm ; when he 
had turned up the page, he put an arm 
round her, and they appeared to read 
the verses together. 

The smile on his face deepened and 
widened ; he read slowly, taking in the 
sweetness of the lines, turning over the 
thought they brought him, half saying 
the words with his lips, and then staring 
across the lawn to where the twilight 
stole slowly from among the dark masses 
of the yews that were ranged at the 
foot. The twilight had hidden there all 
day. 

He was almost sure now that Aveline 


78 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


loved him ; all the annoyances of his 
daily life seemed to fall off from him in 
the X3resence of that assurance. By-and- 
by his mother called to him to come in 
out of the damp ; and he knocked his 
pipe out on the seat, pushed Kate down, 
and went into the house more refreshed 
and invigorated than if he had drunk 
from Sir John’s big tumbler. 

He was very bright and gay that 
evening, and even sang for them, a thing 
he could rarely be induced to do ; he told 
his mother he was starting for Edinburgh 
in two days’ time ; and when she kissed 
him before going up to her room, she 
patted his big shoulder and said, ‘^My 
brave son,” in a voice that affected him 
very deeply. 

He stood a long time at his window 
thinking: a sense of that friendliness a 
summer night has always had for lovers 
was present with him, and helped him to 
look boldly up to the stars’ bright faces 
with his happiness all lettered in his eyes. 
He had suffered a great many hard, sore 
things, and he was going to forget it 
all in the love that was awaiting him ! 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


79 


He had only to stretch out his hand for 
it, and, in his joy and triumph, he was 
very humble though very proud. 

Kate rubbing against his knees awoke 
him from his dreaming, and she reminded 
him he had not spread the rug upon 
which she slept. 

Hext afternoon he left Hose packing his 
portmanteau and went off whistling to 
the banks of the Erne. 

He found Aveline sitting in a patch 
of shade near where the water was 
quieter ; he had known that he should 
find her. 

She had been singing, reading, jdream- 
ing. Her choice of books was not great, 
and it included no novels or story-books 
whatsoever. She had “Aurora Leigh’’ ; a 
Longfellow ; and a volume or two of 
Greek philosophy as personal friends. A 
little worn copy of the “Antigone” was 
often her handbook for a week at a time, 
and all these she knew and recurred to 
often and often. Where she did not 
fully grasp the meaning of the words, her 
fluent fancy skimmed above them in the 
swallow-flight that is so natural to a 


80 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


picturesque mind, and often superimposed 
a meaning all her own. 

Best of all, she knew the ballads of her 
country ; and the old, old love-songs that 
gave Burns his inspiration were familiar 
to her and often on her lips ; music was 
unconscious with her ; her clear, tender 
voice bent to the simple old airs like 
some silver birch sapling to the summer 
winds, and she could not have told you 
what she was singing. 

The book beside her was sunk in the 
green of the mosses ; she was looking 
over the opposite bank, where a light 
wood - breath came through the tree 
trunks and bent the few late scabious 
blooms that still shone a soft pinkish- 
purple, though their season was past. 

“ There ’s many things that come and gae, 

Just kent, and just forgotten, 

And the flowers that busk a bonnie brae, 

Gin anither year lie rotten ! ” 

It was a bit of that sad-sweet song, “It’s 
dowie in the hint o’ hairst.” She had sung 
it through, and she had just come to that 
verse when Willie Gordon appeared upon 
the path : ah, with Aveline it was all yet 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


81 


to be kent ” ; she was far, very far from 
understanding that the same flowers do 
not bloom next year ! Flowers of the 
same kind, in the same ' places, yes ; but, 
not the same flowers. These were not 
thoughts for her ; a flower herself, who 
was so ready to bl oom ; whose dog-rose 
blushes flaunted flag-like in her cheeks as 
the twigs crashed for W illie’ s coming. 

Kate bounded in advance and got her 
greeting, then came the look between 
the two pairs of eyes ; no hand-shake, of 
course, at these informal meetings. 

You still come to your favourite 
haunt?” Willie said, when he had seated 
himself on the big, gray boulder whose 
scanty mosses he had flattened many times. 

‘‘Yes, I am so certain of being quite 
alone ; no one ever comes here ! ” 

“Except me!” 

“And you don’t always ; the other night 
I was here and you appeared, and — you 
didn’t — disturb me ! ” 

“You were singing, and I ” 

“Oh, I didn’t mean that you ought to 
have come ; I mean that even you do 
not disturb me always.” 

6 


82 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


“But you know that I like to come?” 
said Willie quietly, and searched her face 
with his frank eyes. “I am going to 
Edinburgh to-morrow,” he added abruptly, 
as she made no response to his tentative 
advance. 

“Yes? For very long ? ” 

‘ ‘ I don’ t know how long ; ten days 
perhaps.” 

“Oh! Not longer?” in a voice whose 
relief was unmistakable. 

“I cannot tell. If I had my own way, 
I would go away for months, years — and 
do something or other.” 

“You do not like being here?” she 
asked, surprised at his face and emphasis. 

“This sort of life is not full enough for 
me ; I have nothing to do ; a great, hulk- 
ing fellow like me shouldn’t eat his head 
off!” 

Her eyes roved over him, his face, his 
shoulders, his whole figure, with a sort of 
new shyness thrown over her simplicity 
of manner ; he was conscious of it, and 
yet he could not catch her eye. 

“No; you could work very hard. I’m 
sure,” was all she said, and she paused 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


83 


long before she said it, having the un- 
readiness of a transparent soul at flinging 
some slight, appropriate phrase in front 
of the deeper thought she could not do 
other than conceal. 

‘‘If I were going out into the world 
to-morrow, as I wish to God I were 
going,” — Willie began, very gravely — “I 
should ask you to wish me well, and to 
think of me sometimes ; I should ask you, 
perhaps to come here and think of me — 
think of me as if I were some one you 
loved and cared to watch over.” 

Aveline dropped her clear eyes, and 
looked at the long flower-coloured hands 
lying idly between her knees ; she could 
quite well hear each soft breath she 
drew ; she could hear the needles drop- 
ping from the pines some yards away 
—even above the river’s . waters. He was 
looking at her all the time as he had 
never looked at her before ; but she 
was too startled and surprised to know 
this. 

In raising her head with a nervous 
gesture to break the strange spell that 
was falling on her, this glance clashed 


84 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


warmly with her own. Her cheeks defied 
the dog-rose now. 

“Would you do it, do yon think?” he 
said at last. And she had no answer to 
give him at all. 

“ But I need not bother you to tell me,” 
he went on in a different tone. “I am 
no more free to go out into the world 
and work than I am free to” — it seemed 
he hesitated for a moment or two, then, 
in a lower voice continued — “than I am 
free to ask you for your thoughts or 
your love — because I am not my own 
master, because I have no life of my 
own.” 

Such a silence fell on them both as 
only the woodlands can compass, a silence 
full of long, soothing murmurs, a silence 
made up of thousands of live, nameless 
sounds. 

A certain colour had fiowed to the 
long hands that lay on her knees, and 
all Aveline’s thought and sense seemed 
suspended, breathless in the face of a 
new sensation that was jDartly pleasure, 
but so much, oh, so much more pain. 

But Willie spoke. “Sing to me, will 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


85 


yon he said suddenly, and some emotion 
made his voice unusual. “ Sing some- 
thing.” 

“ It ’s dowie in the hint o’ hairst. 

At the wa’gang o’ the swallow, 

When the winds blow cauld, and the burns grow bauld, 
And the woods are hingin’ yellow.” 

‘‘Not that one,” he said, smiling, and 
laying for a second his hands on her 
knee. “I love that one, but it’s too sad; 
sing me the one about ‘ Yarrow ’ ! ” 

She turned her eyes to him full of a 
startled sort of terror. “That’s a sad 
one, too,” she said. “You know it goes: 
‘She found him drowned in Yarrow.’ 

They are all sad, they But I’m afraid 

I must be going home now.” 

She got up, and he picked up her book 
for her. 

“ Really ? ” He stood up too ; looking so 
big, so “wondrous bonnie,” that her heart 
misgave her more and more. 

“Yes, I really must hurry. — Good-bye ! ” 
She held out her hand, and when he 
clasped it, a horrid sort of fear fell upon 
her : she was parting with him ; this was 
the end of her chance of speaking to him 


86 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


or he to her, and there would be long to 
wait for another. A vivid light flamed 
into her face and fear — and something else 
— gave her courage. ‘‘And, Mr Gordon, ” 
she began, hurriedly, while the red glowed 
to the curls that rayed out from her 
head, “ even though you are not going 
aAvay for long years, I — I shall be think- 
ing of you sometimes as I sit here ! Do 
you think it matters? — I mean, I don’t 
think it matters whether one is free or 
not free, one likes to be thought of kindly 
all the same ; at least, I should ” 

She was dreadfully frightened and 
ashamed as she stood there trying to be 
true to herself, but to him she seemed 
only divine. 

“You would like to know you had some 
one’s kind thoughts, even if ” 

It seemed that either she gave them or 
he took her hands, then 

“ Give me your kind thoughts, Aveline ! 
Give me all that you can without my 
having to ask for it, because I may not 
ask as yet. I want a great deal ! — And 
sing the little song about ‘ Willie ’ some- 
times, even though she did And him 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


87 


drowned in Yarrow ; yon know the one 
I mean? There is none that suits your 
voice so well.” He was smiling, but there 
was a triumph as well as an entreaty in 
his eyes. — ‘‘At least — I think so ! 

“ ‘ Willie ’s fair and. Willie ’s rare ! 

And Willie ’s wondrous bonnie. 

And Willie 's Tiech to marry me, 

Oin e'er he marries ony ! ’ ” 

He sang the quaint old words to her in 
his rich Scottish voice, the voice that, 
when it is tender, is more tender than 
any other ; and he would look at her, 
right into her eyes, and there was no 
place to hide her face, because her hands 
were tight in his, and so she had to hide 
it on his shoulder. 


Ill 

That one moment, no longer than any 
other moment, though so much fuller 
and more precious, Aveline had given to 
the Past to keep very carefully, and it 
was laid away among sweet flowers and 
scents and sweeter memories. 


88 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


She had now a sort of right in Willie 
Gordon; he would write to her, and tell 
her of his arrival and his doings and the 
date of his return ; it made her happy to 
know she might feel anxious about his 
welfare and his comfort ; nothing was 
ever prettier than the little frown of 
distress she wore on the morning of his 
departure for Edinburgh. She saw him 
drive by in the pelting rain and his 
collar was not even turned up ! Silly 
fellow, to get wet at the beginning of 
his journey ; but then her tender care 
gave way to pride and glory in her 
Willie. Rain? Cold? What had weather 
to do with him ? He was one of the 
people whom storms cannot shatter nor 
ice freeze ! Ah, she was a very proud 
and happy girl indeed ! 

She sang a good deal in these days ; 
when she was sure that only the squirrels 
and the wood-mice could hear her, she 
sang the little song about Yarrow. Twice 
she met the postman near the laurel 
bushes of the Manse gate, blushing royally 
when she took her letter from him. 

Among certain beautiful things in one 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


89 


letter was the news that Willie was going 
to London, and would therefore be away 
three weeks altogether at least ; so, as 
she might not yet take pleasure in the 
thought of his return, she sat hours by 
the river thinking over their parting, 
which had also been their meeting, and 
dreaming ecstatically of that one moment 
when he had held her in his arms — a 
moment that would surely sing through 
all her life — a moment that could never 
be forgotten or outdone. 

Always a very loving, sympathetic 
nature, she grew more so ; to be loving, 
to be tender, to be gentle, came easier 
than ever ; and when she sat by sick 
children in the village, or talked to old 
women whose sunshine she had been for 
years, her eyes had learned a smile more 
winning, her voice had found a note more 
plaintively wooing than the blue stock- 
dove’s in the high fir- tops on the hill- 
crest when she plains for her mate. 

She was so happy, she knew herself so 
beloved (Willie had written from Edin- 
burgh), that she wanted to make every 
sorrowful thing more cheerful, wanted to 


90 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


dry every eye ; suffering seemed more 
than ever wrong and terrible to her ; 
and when she sat smoothing the rough 
brown hair from Maggie Sinclair’s hot 
forehead the day before the child died, 
Aveline found herself very bitter against 
the fate that overtook the little girl and 
caused her to leave her playmates and 
the bright world that was all smiling for 
her. 

To think that Sir John, himself an 
invalid, fenced in by every comfort, should 
have so little care for the people who, ill 
in the midst of their wretched surround- 
ings, saw nothing but a few hours’ suffer- 
ing between themselves and death ! As 
she picked up the little yellow kitten that 
had been dead Maggie’s constant play- 
mate, and looked round the miserable 
cottage, a feeling of loathing for the sel- 
fishness that permitted such things seemed 
to choke her ; Dr Herries, who attended 
equally the baronet and the villagers, was 
a toady, and a man with as little sym- 
pathy as a block of granite ; he would 
never represent their case to the landlord, 
as he so easily might have done, because, 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


91 


so far as Sir John was concerned, his 
practice at Foresk House would have been 
gone for ever, and with it a good slice of 
his income. 

The cottagers had nothing to hope from 
Dr Herries, whose assistant put up the 
same eight-ounce bottle of “Mixture” for 
a sciatic trouble or a diseased lung — so it 
had been whispered in the village. 

Aveline was sitting in the cottage of 
a widow woman called Barclay, whose 
youngest child had fallen sick the day 
before ; she was revolving all these things 
in her mind, this bright, sunny afternoon, 
nursing the little four-year old and sing- 
ing song after song to it in a hushed 
voice : but no charm of hers could get 
the blue eyes to close in healthful sleep, 
no lullaby calm the fever that burned in 
the little body, no drink her skilful hands 
could prepare ease the torture of the 
small white throat. 

That morning her father and mother 
had been speaking of diphtheria, had been 
saying that possibly that was what had 
swept off little Maggie Sinclair ; but the 
minister had declared that the swiftness 


92 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


of the disease bore no resemblance to the 
action of diphtheria — diphtheria could keep 
you long wrestling with it, could make 
you delirious for weeks : no, what they 
seemed to take in the village was not 
diphtheria. Mr Lockhart was one of those 
wise men who never get past a precedent 
in their own experience ; whole volumes 
of accumulated fact had not half the 
value of a single instance which had come 
under his own observation ; consequently. 
Ills judgment was apt to be narrow and 
unsound, for he never counted the excep- 
tions to a rule, the extraneous circum- 
stances, nor the modifying considerations. 

How the big sun was shining outside 
the cottage room ! It was one of those 
autumn days upon which we cannot see 
him ; he had hung, with a certain massive 
coyness, a curtain of shimmering golden 
haze before his face, and pale blue rifts 
of mist floated over the distant woods 
and stole up the hill-sides to join their 
fleece-white sisters on the top. 

“Wee Meery,’’ as her mother called her, 
was very silent now; the soft hushed 
groans had stopped, and the breaths 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


93 


came with more and more difficulty. 
Aveline hung over the child a moment 
and then decided to get a neighbouring 
woman : there was Mrs Ballantyne, a few 
houses down the road, who would come, 
she kiiew. As she stopped in the door- 
way to put on her hat, a carriage and 
pair passed quickly ; it was the Gordon 
livery, and Lady Gordon and Rose sat 
in it. Lady Gordon was looking down 
slightly, and she had a veil on ; Aveline 
could not see the expression of her face ; 
but Rose was very upright, and with a 
curiously hard look about her eyes and 
mouth, which rather marred her resem- 
blance to Willie. Neither of them saw 
Miss Lockhart ; and she herself, as she 
hurried for Mrs Ballantyne, wondered 
what could have given Willie’s sister that 
expression ; she had no idea what Rose 
suffered on driving through this ill-treated 
village, where, on every side, marks of 
her brother’s criminal selfishness greeted 
her. ‘‘But he will suffer for his wrong- 
doing!” she said often in her heart, with 
a rather Scotch sense of the punishment 
that rarely tarried; “he will suffer; per- 


94 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


haps that is why he is suffering so. No ; 
now it is only his sins to himself that he 
is expiating ! — Ah, poor John ! And no one 
suffers singly ; what he is bringing uiDon 
mother and Willie and me ! ” 

Lady Gordon and she were going to 
make two or three calls upon distant 
acquaintances, and Rose’s thoughts were 
very stern, and far removed from the 
ordinary lightness demanded by social 
intercourse as she drove along. 

Mrs Ballantyne was out — Mrs Ballantyne 
had just gone ‘‘down by.” That meant to 
the village shop, no doubt. 

Should Aveline run there, or would it 
be better to go back to the child? Yes, 
decidedly ; let her go back to the child ; 
something told her it was dying, poor 
pretty “wee Meery” — and nothing could 
be done for it now. She had seen Maggie 
Sinclair die three days ago — she knew 
what they looked like when they were 
dying. Tears in her eyes and her heart 
wringing, she hurried back. The cottage 
door was open, and some one was leaning 
over the bed — it was the mother, and a 
sore cry of “Oh, the wee lambie ! Auch 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


95 


the wee lambie ! ” came at regular inter- 
vals as the woman rocked herself to and 
fro on one knee with the little body in 
her arms. 

‘‘ Oh, Mrs Barclay ! — I had just run out 
to get Mrs Ballantyne to come. I haven’t 
been gone five minutes,” began Aveline, 
shocked to think she had left her post, 
no matter for what good reason ; that 
Mrs Barclay should have seen the little 
thing lying there all alone ! 

For the poor mother, led by some subtle 
instinct, had come back from the turnip 
hoeing — and she had found wee Meery 
dead. 

****** 

Three-quarters of an hour later, Aveline 
Lockhart stood on the steps of Foresk 
House ; her excitement was so excessive 
that it seemed ages to her before anyone 
answered her ring ; at last a maid-servant 
appeared. 

“Can I see Sir John?” she asked, in a 
voice which a very great effort had made 
calm. 

The woman looked at her; the long, 
quick walk had made Aveline’ s cheeks 


96 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


rosy and her hair wild ; she looked lovelier 
than usual, but to the discreet housemaid’s 
conventional eyes, only untidy ; besides,* 
no one ever asked for Sir John, and Miss 
Lockhart was not on visiting terms with 
the family. 

Sir John never sees visitors. Miss, un- 
less they are very intimate friends with 
the family,” said Jane, with a magnificent 
servants’ -hall snub. 

‘‘ Will you be good enough to ask if he 
will see me ? — I have no card with me, 
but say Miss Lockhart.” 

Jane sniffed at being offered no card, 
and held her salver very ostentatiously in 
front of her ; she was not accustomed to 
opening the door to people who possessed 
no cards ; the few people who did come 
to Foresk House were county people, hall- 
marked by their estates, and to them 
Jane’s manner was very different. 

“Please go and ask Sir John to spare 
me five minutes, if he feels well enough ! ” 

While this colloquy was going on, a 
young man appeared at the window, 
which, carefully curtained, yet allowed a 
view of the steps; it was Sir John him- 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


97 


self, and he was quite interested and 
amused. Who was this young woman 
with the pale golden hair streaming round 
her glowing cheeks, and a figure as slight 
and slim as a London lady’ s ? He thought 
he would send Jeffreys to find out. 

Jeffreys, profiting by a rather calmer 
mood of his master’s, had slipped down- 
stairs to have a chat with the other ser- 
vants, and was for once not in attendance. 
Very slowly and carefully, but with pale 
eyes all lit up. Sir John moved across to 
the door, and opening it behind its thick 
portiere, called, Jane ! ” 

There was a smile on his lips, an altera- 
tion in his whole appearance ; he felt 
more as he had been used to feel when 
he was well, strong, and able to be as 
wicked as he wished. 

The servant came at once. 

Who is that at the door ? ” 

‘‘Miss Lockhart, from the Manse, sir; 
and she was asking to see you.” 

“And you have left her waiting on the 
doorstep r’ Sir John was well aware that 
he must be overheard, and infused a tone 
of severe displeasure into his melodious, 
7 


98 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


cultivated voice, a voice that was much 
softer, much sweeter, most people would 
have said, than Willie’s. ‘‘I shall speak 
to you another time, Jane ; beg Miss 
Lockhart to walk in.” 

Jle remained near the door, pale, hand- 
some, interesting, and full of a grave, 
delicate courtesy that had served him so 
well in other years. 

Aveline, in the brown stuff gown and 
wide brown hat, hair flying, cheeks flush- 
ing, and her eyes dark with some emotion 
as yet unexplained, came in. Sir John 
bowed with a deference that had never 
failed to be impressive, as coming from 
himself, and shut the door behind him, 
letting the great red portiere fall into a 
sombre back-ground. 

‘‘Don’t think I am going to ask you 
why you want to see me ; I fear it is 
only to ask my aid in some parish charity ; 
count on me for that, please ; but let me 
say that to a very dull, disconsolate invalid 
you are the most delightfully unexpected 
apparition. Miss Lockhart: my fairy god- 
mother has been thinking of me.” 

Almost too confused to reply to the 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


99 


elegant playfulness of this speech, Aveline 
murmured something about having ven- 
tured to apply to him, and hoping that 
her visit was not inadvertent. 

He had put a finger on the bell ; and 
the astounded Jeffreys, posted up by 
Jane, and only too charmed to have an 
opportunity of seeing with his own eyes, 
appeared with unaccustomed alacrity. 

‘‘Tea!” said Sir John very softly, and 
barely turning his head. Jeffreys van- 
ished, determined to observe more fully 
when he came in with the tea. 

“ Sir John, I have done a very bold 
thing in coming here like this, and I am 
sure you will believe that I must have 
some very strong reason indeed for com- 
ing. I have just seen a sight of very 

great sadness, if you could imagine ” 

So much Aveline managed to say of the 
speech she had thought out and rehearsed 
during her walk to Foresk ; so much and 
no more, for Sir John interrupted her, 
courteously, even charmingly, but authori- 
tatively. He had scarcely taken in what 
she said ; he only knew she was stating 
the object of her visit, was, perhaps, about 


100 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


to go into details with regard to this 
charity regarding which she had conceived 
the happy idea of begging personally ; she 
was a minister’s daughter, and should be 
well up in these things, but they were 
nothing to him ; he supposed he could lay 
his hand on a five- pound note before she 
left ; but meantime, he wanted the novel 
pleasure of her visit to be unspoiled by 
practical considerations. 

He was looking at her hair, her colour, 
the outline of her face, her eyes — ^by Jove, 
what eyes ! — and her mouth ; best of all, 
her mouth. What a freshness, what a 
curve, what coy corners it had ; how it 
would lend itself to the saying of every- 
thing that was sweet and charming ; how 
suited, too, to kisses. A mouth to fall in 
love with, decidedly ! Then the seriousness 
of the whole face ! the earnestness of the 
straight brows — the charity was evidently 
very precious to Miss Lockhart’s simple, 
inexperienced, country soul ; and Sir John 
was immensely amused at what he con- 
sidered the inappositeness of her expres- 
sion. Grood Heavens, to think of a face 
like that existing down at Ardlach ! 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


101 


Oh, she must not be allowed to state her 
case at once, or she would have finished 
and go away. He smiled whimsically. 

“Do you know, Miss Lockhart, I am 

going to exercise my privilege as an 

invalid, and I am going to ask you to 
humour me in something. I don’t know 
when I shall have the pleasure of another 
visit from you, so I want to make the 
most of this one: will you please me by 
trying to imagine you have known me 

before, will you allow me to treat you as 
though I had already enjoyed your friend- 
ship for some time ? I don’ t know if 
you’ll agree with me, but I always regret 
the amount of time one is obliged to 
throw away upon preliminaries ; after- 
wards, when acquaintanceship has ripened 
to friendship, the preliminaries do seem so 
banal — now, I’m sure you’ve found that?” 
he smiled at her with an almost child- 
like appeal in his eyes. 

“Living here, almost alone— for in my 
state of health relatives prove peculiarly 
—what shall I say ?— trying seems too 
strong, but at anyrate— living almost 
alone makes me very grateful for an 


102 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


occasion like the present when I am 
charged with the entertainment of a 
young lady.” 

Aveline had never been spoken to like 
this before ; it made her very uncomfort- 
able ; but she told herself that this poor 
Sir John must have a very dull, wretched 
sort of life on the whole, and that she 
ought to say something sympathetic, even 
if the whole time she were thinking how 
much more needful of pity were some 
others. . . . 

“I am afraid you must feel it very 
much, not being able to go out or — but 
no doubt you read a great deal?” with 
delicate tact, pausing in the enumeration 
of those pleasures he must miss, and 
going on to the possible advantages of his 
confinement. 

‘^Yes, I do! — Oh, I read, of course, a 
great deal 1 ” said Sir John, with a simple 
disregard of fact that almost caused 
Jeffreys to blink as he brought in the 
tea-things. — ^‘Is there no buttered toast?” 
turning to the servant. — I confess to the 
fondness of a schoolboy for buttered toast. 
Miss Lockhart !” 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


103 


J effreys explained that there was some : 
he was just bringing it. 

When everything was arranged, and the 
man had left the room, Sir John said : 
‘‘Now ! ” — in a tone of high pleasure — “yon 
will pour out for me, won’t yon? And 
open your jacket, for I know this room is 
very hot ! I have to have a fire almost 
always.” 

“I don’t think I want any tea, thank 
you,” said Aveline at last, feeling more 
and more oppressed by Sir John’s posses- 
sive manner. “No, really; I don’t feel 
inclined for any ! I have gone through 
so much this afternoon!” 

“Well, then, I shall pour you out a cup, 
and try and persuade you to take some 1 
After your walk, it will pick you up!” 
He poured out a cup carefully, smiling at 
her inquiringly before he put in both 
sugar and cream ; then he brought it over 
and placed it on a small carved-oak stool, 
which he moved near her chair. Then he 
paused just opposite her. “You are really 
looking pale and faint,” he said with com- 
miseration, “and I know exactly what 
you need! Now you are under orders, 


104 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


Miss Lockhart, I get so much doctoring 
that I am thinking of taking a diploma 
myself without further study. Here ! ” — 
he had been walking about his room as 
he spoke, but he came to his place just 
in front of her holding a very small glass 
with some clear yellowish-green stuff in 
it. “Drink it ! you will find it very nice,” 
he said. 

Mechanically, Aveline took the glass, 
more to break the spell of the strange 
smile with which his eyes sought and 
seemed to search her face. She sipped it 
and put it down. “ Now, you must regard 
it as medicine, and take it all while we 
are talking,” he added, still playfully, and 
seated himself, with a cup of tea, and, 
this time, in a chair closer to her own. 

“How is it. Miss Lockhart, that I have 
never seen you before ^ Forgive me, it 
sounds rude, but I have not even heard 
of you, except vaguely, and the whole 
place ought to ring with praises of a face 
like yours.” 

This was too much for Aveline ; she felt 
some half-angry tears coming to her 
eyes ; she put down the half-finished glass 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


105 


of liqueur and stood up. must be 

going!” she said, almost shyly — she was 
so confused, she had found everything so 
different from what she had expected ; 
the burst of feeling that had been strong 
enough to decide her on taking this 
peculiar course, on appealing personally 
to Sir John, had become diffused now in 
mere excitement and a sort of tremor ; if 
she had been successful, there would have 
been something to write to Willie, but 
that he should ever hear of this visit — oh, 
she must get away ! But first, an effort, 
one effort for the cause she had so at 
heart. 

‘‘Not so soon! Oh, please not so soon! 
We have not had our chat!” He got up, 
slowly, and with obvious pain, and took 
in both of his the hand she mechanically 
held out to him. He looked at her now 
with a sort of poetic wistfulness in his 
eyes. “Well, if you will go, forgive my 
asking one question. Tell me your name, 
will you ? Have they given you a name 
to suit yourself ? Ho you know. Miss 
Lockhart” — in a little burst of apology — 
“I cannot talk to you in the ordinary 


106 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


way; whether it is the unexpectedness of 
your appearance, or just your strong 
personal charm, I don’t know — but you 
seem to me to be the heroine, the lady 
fair, out of some old ballad or song — you 
are yourself just a song and a poem!” 
Nobody could do this sort of thing better 
than Sir John when he liked; if, owing 
to unfriendly circumstances, he had to iDut 
into a first interview what would have 
come better in a third, it was not his 
fault! ‘‘Am I to hear the nameT’ 

“My name is Aveline,” said the per- 
plexed girl, trying to draw away her 
hand; “and really, now I must hurry 

home; but first ” 

“Let me at least thank you for coming ! ” 
— they were standing up, and he was 
very near to her, excitement was making 
him quite strong again, then reflectively, 
murmurously : “Aveline — it is lovely! The 
Lady Aveline ! — Grood bye ! — Stay, I may 
kiss your hand in homage?” He did so 
delicately, a long, thoughtful sort of kiss, 
which sent a shiver all through Aveline’ s 
frame in spite of the fact — which she 
had tried repeatedly to remember — that 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


107 


he was Willie’s brother. For a naoment 
her head swam, but she recovered herself 
with Sir John’s next phrase: “You will 
come again to tell me of the business that 
is in your mind, for which I am flattering 
myself that you w^ant my help ! — It is 
too late to-day, and I am perhaps giving 
myself the excitement of too much 
pleasure ! ” This he said cleverly enough. 
He would appear weary, and then she 
would not worry him with her charity : 
if she really cared about it, she could 
come again ; if not, he would have had 
the small amusement of one visit ; he 
would have enjoyed the near presence 
of this beautiful woman for half-an-hour 
at least. 

“It will not take a moment, but I 
must tell you now ! ” she said firmly. “I 
have come from the village. Have you 
heard how unhappy they are there? — Oh, 
Sir John, if you could have seen Mrs 
Sinclair crying when her little girl died, 
as I did three days ago — you would have 
been sorry — oh— sorry / Such a lovely 
little girl, so fair, so bright — and only 
eight years old ! It was the damp, un- 


108 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


healthy room they had to live in that 
gave her the disease. Mr Bowers, yonr 
factor, is so hard and cruel, and I am 
sure you never hear of these things . 
yourself, or you would not allow them to 
go on ! So many of them are ill or 
sickly, and when the bright healthy 

children die, it is — ^it is time ” She 

could not help it ; she had seen these 
things herself, and she was sobbing 
through her appeal. How lovely she 
looked with all April in her face ! Even if 
it was the old, tiresome story — it seemed 
worth listening to in this new form. 

‘^My dear Miss Lockhart!” he said, 
putting one hand on her shoulder, 
standing very close, and bending his 
head quite near to the fair curls — “My 
dear Miss Lockhart, you must not allow 
these things to distress you so deeply ! 
The village people have so many children, 
you know ! Far more than they can . 
comfortably support ; it is providential 
whenever one or two of them drop off 
early ; it saves so much expense ! — But 
really, I cannot bear to see you so un- 
happy ! — Ah ! you think me heartless?” 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


109 


u Y^ry heartless, terribly heartless, if 
you mean what you say ! ” Aveline said 
suddenly and in a firmer voice. 

‘‘Well, anything to cheer you up, you 
know.” 

“Oh, don’t mind about me ; what are a 
few tears from me % If you had seen 
and heard what I have this afternoon, I 
think — I think you would have cried 
too ! Oh ! poor Mrs Barclay ; she is a 
widow with four children, so hard- 
working, poor woman, and just because 
she has no husband to make a fuss. 
Bowers treats her worse than the others. 
Her house is a perfect fever den — Dr 
Herries himself said so ; he said only 
people of their class and rats could live 
and breathe in such surroundings — I heard 
him say it. But even he is wrong ! and 
they can’t live, poor things. Mrs Barclay’s 
youngest child died to-day, died very 
nearly in my arms, after being ill only 
two days ! I had been nursing it and 
soothing it all the afternoon, and ” 

“What!” cried Sir John on a sharp 
high note — “what?” He put his hand to 
his head and reeled back against the 


110 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


black oak cabinet — his face was livid 
with fright. ‘‘You have come straight 
from a place where there is fever — typhus, 
no doubt ; you have been hanging over 
some wretched brat, absorbing all the 
infection, and you come here — and to 
me!” He was gasping, pale, hysterical — 
almost speechless ; his voice lost all its 
melody, and came high and cracked — he 
leaned there, holding the woodwork with 
his nervous hands, staring at her in in- 
credulous horror. 

“I came to tell you! I thought if 
once you knew of the sufferings of your 
poor tenants, you would see that some- 
thing was done ; I only thought that if I 
could speak to you myself — I who had 
seen it all, who had seen these poor 
little things die ” 

“And you come here to me, in my 
delicate state of health, carrying death 
in your garments? Don’t you know what 
infection is ? — haven’t you heard of typhus 
fever? Stand away, stand back! You 
must be mad to do such a thing ; you 
have conspired to kill me^ do you hear, 

TO KILL ME ! ” 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


111 


All of a sudden this almost shriek 
died away, and Sir John tumbled to the 
floor, foam and blood coming from his 
mouth. Aveline rushed to the bell and 
rang it ; she had never thought of this ; 
whatever her feelings about Sir John 
might be, she had never paused to con- 
sider the question of possible infection. 
For herself she was brave enough ; she 
thought as little of herself as the young 
baronet had done ! But 

Jeffreys’ slow, dignified step quickened 
when he saw his master. 

“You had better go. Miss,” he said 
respectfully, looking up as he knelt above 
Sir John. “Master often faints if he is 
over-excited ; I expect that’s just what it 
is; he’s not used to seeing people. He’ll 
come round soon ; but if I was you. Miss, 
I’d just go home.” 

The man’s manner was not offensive, 
though familiar. 

Aveline said a few words in explanation, 
expressed a hope that Sir John would be 
none the worse, and hastily left. 

She went home by the woods, and 
crossed the little bridge. She had made 


112 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


a terrible mistake in her eager, impulsive 
desire to act decisively, practically in this 
difficult matter. 

What would Willie think of her un- 
wisdom when she came to tell him, or 
when he came to hear ? 

About Sir John’s unblushing selfishness 
she never thought for a moment ; he was 
certainly beneath contempt ; but for her 
own rashness she had unstinted blame 
and deep regret these many days. 


ly 

“ Willie’s fair and Willie’s rare ! 

And Willie’s wondrous bonnie, 

And Willie’s hech to marry me, 

Gin e’er he marries ony ! ” 

How the little verse had stayed with him 
during all his comings and goings in poor 
stified London ! When he drove from his 
hotel to his lawyer’s the hansom cab 
wheels played the time, and he found 
himself, in the middle of Piccadilly, that 
never thins or slacks for any reason, but 
only congests more and more, singing the 
pretty words, and thinking of the sweet 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


113 


bird-like voice that had sung them with 
so modest a boldness by the Emeu’s run- 
ning river, where was a sound at spate- 
time that gave hints of Piccadilly. That 
merle of his ! — He was always thinking of 
her ; when should he see her? what should 
they say to one another ? 

He loved, and had always loved, every 
bird that sang in Ardlach woods, and it 
was only a case of loving* more, of loving 
quite differently this one bird that was 
his, and that would flute for him only. 

Willie Gordon had the strong vein of 
sentiment that distinguishes his country- 
men the world over — that is heard in 
their music, that speaks in their poetry, 
that is buried in their hearts. There was 
something in his love, a quality very 
subtle and strange, that can only grow 
in the soul of a true Scot — that is tra- 
vestied merely in the sentimentality of a 
German. 

He was in London still, going about 
this difficult business, thinking of his 
sweet Scotch lassie, when a telegram 
reached him: ‘^John very ill. Come at 
once. — R ose.’’ It had been at his hotel 
8 


114 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


for hours, and they had not known how 
to catch him, or when he would be in to 
get it. Willie only stopped to put a few 
letters and small matters in his pocket, 
while the hall porter looked out the 
first train. He had three-quarters of an 
hour to catch it, and he went up-stairs 
and packed his portmanteau in a leisurely 
way, sorely troubled all the time. 

In an hour he was being whirled north- 
ward on the ISTorth- Wes tern line, pondering 
and wondering what news would await 
him at Edinburgh, where Rose would 
surely have another telegram waiting for 
him : at their first stoppage he sent her 
a wire to this effect, for there was always 
a delay then in Edinburgh before getting 
into the Inverness train, and he would 
have time to run up to his club. 

The last letter from Foresk, a few days 
ago, had told him that John was worse, 
was in bed indeed, and that the Inverness 
doctor who reinforced Hr Herries on 
occasion had come over more than once. 
This, however, had often happened before. 
Ever since John had come home they had 
been subject to alarms of the same kind, 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


115 


when, for a few weeks, the attack might 
at any moment take a serions turn. 
Willie was therefore not over- anxious, 
and now and then allowed his mind to 
recur to thoughts of Aveline, whom he 
always pictured singing in the woods by 
the Erne. He had never seen her in a 
house ; he wondered how she would look 
sitting by a table with the lamplight fall- 
ing across her hands and hair — sewing, 
perhaps, or just calmly reading, with the 
eyelids slanted over the dark grey eyes. 

On the whole, it was not altogether a 
painful journey ; nothing in the world 
would ever be so painful again as it had 
been before. Had he not always now a 
fair beacon-light to rest his eyes on? some 
one thing in his life that would always be 
beautiful, always be cheery, inspiring, and 
comforting? The whole tide of his being 
set towards Aveline Lockhart : if ever 
there was a faithful, unerring, unwavering 
love in this world, it was Willie Gordon’s. 

He arrived in Edinburgh and walked up 
to his club ; yes, there was a telegram for 
him — it was a long one. 

It told him that his brother was dead. 


116 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


Willie sat down heavily in the club 
library with the two sheets in his hand; 
at this difficult moment he had no con- 
sciousness of his own feelings ; it was quite 
mechanical on his part when he got up 
and walked into the autumn brilliance of 
Princes Street. Two or three men he 
knew recognised him and nodded to him ; 
but Willie never saw them, though he 
saw very dimly the great Castle rising 
out of a morning mist that lent dimness 
and unreality to the bases of its rocks. 
He was only just in time for his train. 

He threw himself back in the corner of 
his compartment, and made the journey 
gravely, facing and controlling the strong 
feeling that overcame him. 

He had not loved his brother, and he 
had been forced to disapprove fatally of 
him. He could have admitted that it was 
a good thing for every one that a life 
which was not only useless but hurtful 
should be ended — a burden to himself, 
a sorer burden to others ; but none of 
these admissions, reasonable though they 
were, had anything to do with the deep 
feeling — which is family feeling and is 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


117 


nowhere more at home than in Scottish 
blood — that filled him in the first presence 
of his loss. 

Now, indeed, his woodland merle could 
not sing to him ! All personal troubles 
would melt before the music of her voice ; 
the world’s woes would recede to a distance 
at which they would be both bearable and 
j3icturesque ; but this grief, dark, unde- 
fined, but potent, lying in the depths of 
his being, coursing in his veins — with this 
Willie Gordon retired within himself, 
neither suffering nor thinking much, but 
just watching alone beside it. 

In the silent greeting between him and 
Rose, in the kiss and warm embrace he 
gave his mother, was his whole strong 
heart surging up in him. Rose Gordon 
looked only straighter and paler and 
sterner than in her frequent strenuous 
moods ; but even she had been shaken 
to a wondering sort of fear and sorrow 
at the moment of John’s death. This 
had passed very quickly, and when Willie 
saw her she was again that slim, clear- 
eyed figure of Justice, with small leanings 
to Mercy, to which he was accustomed. 


118 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


It was for his mother that Willie felt : 
all the way driving to the house, and 
often in the train, he had been wondering 
how the poor gentle woman would bear 
herself. The disappointment in her 
favourite boy was an old story now ; but, 
at his death, all the brightness of his 
promise, all the pride of earlier days, 
would rise up in her mind and serve to 
emphasise the impression of his futility. 
Why are such men born as John Grordon ? 
Perhaps to break the hearts of the 
women who love them. 

Willie spent most of the evening after 
his arrival sitting with his mother in her 
own room and stroking her hands. They 
scarcely said a word, these two ; and from 
an adjoining room came the sound of 
Rose’s pen as she wrote letters and cards 
to the immense family circle. 

By the morning, when he was called on 
to attend to much business, Willie had 
resumed his simple, every-day demeanour; 
he had looked at and accepted the situa- 
tion, and, though he said nothing about 
it, he had found a measure for his 
sorrow. 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


119 


He was already accustomed to the ‘ ‘ Sir 
William” with which the servants and de- 
pendents had at once, with the mobility 
of their kind, endued him. Next day, 
when the warm afternoon spent in letter- 
writing had waned, he and Kate went 
out together to the Erne side, not exactly 
because he hoped to meet Aveline, but 
because he wanted to be quiet and to 
think. Bowers had dropped a hint of 
fever present in the village ; and Dr 
Herries had said that there was a compli- 
cation in the nature of Sir John’s last 
illness which suggested he had not 
escaped from infection by the disease 
that was hovering in the air. This had 
to be reflected on. If it were so, it 
proved that God had not forgotten His 
world : that terrible Judaic justice was 
still meted out where it was due. 

The end of harvest — the hint o’ hairst” 
— was a dangerous season : only the year 
before, Bose had suffered from a sort of 
low fever, which was very unaccountable, 
but which. Dr Herries had not seen lit to 
mention, bore a resemblance to the illness 
that laid up one or two of the villagers. 


120 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


The finger had been laid lightly on 
innocent Eose ; but upon John, clothed 
with the sins of his selfishness, God’s 
whole hand had been laid. 

With the faint sweet scents of the 
woodland all about him, Willie analysed 
these thoughts one after another ; but 
having looked at them, he saw they were 
not good to dwell on. Then the beauty 
and the mystery of Nature stole in upon 
his mind ; the light chill in the timorous 
wind that played so tenderly among the 
brittle leaves refreshed him and cheered 
him. He watched the uneasy swallows, 
which a single cold day would cause to 
gather about the big elm near Foresk 
South Lodge, piping their shrill roll-call 
among the branches, and shaking down 
the last of their golden store. 

There was that other song of Aveline’s 
that came to him somehow : what was it ? 

“ It’s dowie in the hint o’ hairst 
At the wa’gang o’ the swallow, 

When the winds blow cauld, and the burns grow 
bauld, 

And the woods are hingin’ yellow.” 

Well that was this afternoon ! — Only the 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


121 


winds would be colder still before the 
swallows w^ent ; Erne would come raging 
through his rocky channel with the 
volume of all the mountain and moor- 
land burns in his arms, and the first 
violence of his winter temper in his 
stream. 

Willie sat on the stone where last time 
she had been beside him, and the threads 
of his life began to look as though they 
might be woven into a bright piece some 
day ; so fleet is time, so quickly does it 
hurry over crises, or rather, so much 
living does it crowd into those dull, 
dreich days which follow them, that the 
future takes shape out of the broken 
fragments of our lives, and dark veils 
taken from our eyes leave a clearer 
vision. 

To-morrow he would follow his brother 
to the grave, and listen to the service 
that he had last heard at his father’s 
death. 

Then he would have to enmesh himself 
in the difiicult business that surrounds 
the succession to an estate, and in his 
case it would be doubly complicated. He 


122 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


would have a life as busy and as full 
as it had once been idle ; he would 
devote himself to the tenants ; they were 
7tis tenants now ; cut down the expenses 
at Foresk in such a manner as not to 
affect his mother and sister ; and wisely 
employ what money he could lay hands 
on for the immediate improvements re- 
quired in the village. Among other 
things, he would be engaged to Aveline, 
openly, publicly, proudly. He was quite 
sensible enough to feel that after the 
constraint and difficulty, the tedium and 
repression of his earlier years, this liberty 
and freedom that was coming to him 
was quite deserved. 

He sat, patting his dog and talking to 
her, sometimes smiling even, as visions 
of his future showed themselves to him 
— the future for which he was so ready 
to use his best strength to make it bright 
for himself.and others. 

It would be a sweet and lovely home 
when Aveline, his mother, and Hose— all 
of whom loved him so — lived at Foresk 
in the fulness of peace and human- 
kindness. Their hearts would not be 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


123 


wrung with tales of suffering they had no 
means to appease. 

In the quiet talk he and his mother 
had had together the night before, when 
a subdued sorrow and a timid, just-born 
peace had been apparent in Lady Gfordon’s 
manner, Willie had shadowed out the 
idea very diffidently, and had stolen two 
or three careful glances at her face : it 
was a new thing for Willie to be nerv- 
ous, but when we are making a half- 
confidence, one eye must always be open 
to see that our friend’s mind has not 
filled in the other half from imagina- 
tion. 

Lady Gordon had no idea whom Willie 
could be referring to in this visionary, 
halting conversation, and in pondering it 
over afterwards with Rose, decided that 
he had been speaking generally, and that 
as yet he had not seen the girl he 
would care to make his wife. Indeed, as 
Rose said in her practical way, where 
could he have seen her ? 

And there WiHie sat, thinking over the 
new future, the new hopes, and refiecting 
upon the old troubles, now passing away; 


124 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


there was no doubt he would be a good 
landlord, no doubt that his tenants and 
his estate would be his first care; and as 
a rider to every suggestion of his mind 
came the silver finish of his love for 
Aveline. 

In all that scene he saw her, and his 
eyes rested on the opposite bank, where 
her gaze had so often strayed ; he saw 
no more pink scabious, not a flower at 
all, but just the dry gold leaves hurry- 
ing over each dead stem and decaying 
calyx. The beech -trees had spread a red 
carpet underneath their branches, and the 
elms had laid their shadow court with 
cloth of gold. 

In a few days he would meet her here, 
and have his first long, uninterrupted talk 
with her. To Willie Gordon this new 
confidence between himself and his heart’s 
love would be something more fresh and 
precious than a May dewdrop in a daisy’s 
eye — it would be something as rarely held 
in the hand of man. 

Under the influence of this hope he got 
off the stone, and Kate followed him 
through the woods, making the passage 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


125 


over the Lover’s Leap as usual beneath 
her master’s arm. 

Half way up the hill-slope Willie 
paused ; he and the Foresk woods were 
in the shadow of their own hills, but the 
sun, coming through a dip, gleamed on 
the fire of the rowan clusters on the 
Ardlach side of the river, and threw hand- 
fuls of red gold into the windows of the 
Manse : somewhere, perhaps touched by 
that last sunshine, she was, and there 
was no one on whom the sun did so well 
to linger. 

When he turned to go on his way, he 
saw Hose coming towards him. 

wanted to meet you,” she said; ^‘1 
had something to say.” 

She turned and walked with him ; already 
she had on a black gown of some sort. 
After a moment she stopped, and he fol- 
lowed her example ; the path was narrow, 
and each leaned against a tree facing the 
other ; Kate, a little in advance, turned 
her black head to see if they were coming 
on, and showed the rose-pink of her 
mouth and the brilliant glister of her 
teeth. 


126 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


‘‘Willie,” Rose began, in some little diffi- 
culty, “ I am sure you have not heard that 
John had— had caught the fever that is 
in the village 

“ I have,” said Willie gravely. 

“And do you know all about it? Did 
Jeffreys tell you how it chanced ? ” 

“No ; Herries only hinted it, and — I did 
not question him. Where was the use ? ” 

A little pause fell. 

“I think you ought to know,” Rose said 
slowly. “There have been several deaths 
in the village lately, of children especially. 
Miss Lockhart used to take great interest 
in the people, and nursed many of them. 
I always knew that, and liked it in her. 
One day, when mother and I were out 
calling, she determined herself to appeal 
to John. She had no idea what was the 
matter with the children ; she only knew 
that the unhealthiness of their houses 
was killing them. She came straight from 
the deathbed of a little child to Foresk, 
and asked for John. He saw her; she 
was there a long time — at least over 
half-an-hour ; Jeffreys saw her, of course, 
and heard about it, but— John told me. 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


127 


He caught the infection from her, we 
think.” 

Hose’s voice had sunk very low, and 
her eyes were fixed on her brother ; it 
was as though she wanted him to appre- 
ciate the terrible justice of Sir John’s 
death without her mention of it. 

There was a long pause, and then Willie, 
whose mind had indeed grasped this light 
upon the subject, but who was engaged 
in dreaming of Aveline’s gentle courage, 
said, more with the air of saying some- 
thing than because he was interested in 
it: “Of course one has heard of that — 
some one carrying infection in their 
clothes and passing it on to another, 
who ” 

“But you know the poor girl is dead 
too?” said Hose with simple tenderness, 
and looking sad for the fate that had 
overtaken her; “that is so terrible, isn’t 
it?” 

“ She ” 

“Yes, poor thing! She died — I think 
four days ago. It is very terrible,” look- 
ing blankly through the woodland ; 
“it ” 


128 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


She said no more, for her brother swayed 
round heavily against the tree- trunk, put 
up his arms, and buried his face in them. 

‘‘Willie! ” She started forward and 

put a hand on his sleeve. He said nothing : 
but when she continued to question him 
he motioned her to go away ; and after a 
little, very perplexed and puzzled, she went. 

There is nothing more to say about Willie 
Gordon. The winds grew colder through 
the woodland, the autumn mists wound 
their shrouds around the hills, and the 
swallows twittered and gathered closer in 
the big elm-tree where their meeting was 
every year. 

He was alone in the “hint o’ hairst,” 
and it was nearly the “wa’gang o’ the 
swallow ; ” but the lines of the old song 
that Willie had never remembered wailed 
through the woodlands now : 

“ Bat oh, it’s dowier far to see 
The wa’gang o’ her the heart gangs wi’, 

The dead-set o’ a shinin’ e’e 

That darkens the weary world on thee.” 

He had met the tragedy of his youth 
through another’s sinning ; he had had 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


129 


one hope for a little, and then it had 
been taken. 

Truly, his love had been one of those 
things that ‘‘come and gae : ” and who 
would watch the pink scabious by Erne’s 
bank next year? His flower, Ms love, the 
sun that had shone out over Ms life for a 
few days — dead, buried, out of sight of 
his eyes, deaf to his voice, where his 
hands could never reach her, however 
they might yearn. 

That a Nemesis should have overtaken 
his brother — that was justice ; that he 
should have died of the very scourge he 
had prepared for others — that was justice, 
bare, awesome, not to be questioned or 
entreated ; but that Aveline should have 
been the means, the instrument in the 
hand of Fate, for Fate to use and throw 
away, and that he, Willie, should be the 
life-long mourner — what was that % 

When he was able to think of it, his 
revolt against the seeming injustice of 
this world fllled all his soul ; but he did 
not think so till later, and it is as well 
not to follow him in that mood. Better 
to leave him in the dim early autumn 
9 


130 


The Hint o’ Hairst 


night, alone in the great woods, with 
only his dog beside him ; to leave him 
leaning half lifelessly against a tree-trunk, 
the rough fine pattern of the crisp 
lichens impressed upon a cheek that was 
wet with the first tears his manhood had 
ever known. 





A MAN I MET 





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A MAN I MET 


It was my last night in Vienna. The 
Orient Express, that long train that will 
land you in Roumania and a hundred other 
agreeable and disagreeable places if you 
will sit still and let it, was timed to start 
out at 10.2. This fact sufficed as a reason 
for my dining shortly after eight, having 
the whole of my packing and bill-paying 
still to do. It was nine o’clock when I 
left the Kritschki Restaurant in the wide 
Ring Strasse ; through the first pearl veils 
of a June twilight the lights were blink- 
ing ineffectively, but I was still so dubious 
as to the wisdom of consuming roast beef 
and a compote of sour cherries in alter- 
nate mouthfuls when bound on a long 
journey that I never cast a glance towards 
what are undoubtedly the finest public 
buildings in Europe. As a resting-place, 
the Hotel von Meissl and Schadn had been 
my rather vague choice. To know nothing 


134 


A Man I Met 


of any hotel in the town, but to read 
the names of five in a railway guide ; 
thereupon to place five cherry-stones on 
one’s knee as one sat in the train, give 
the name of a hotel to each, and decide 
to go to the hotel whose stone was joggled 
off last, may not commend itself to most 
travellers as a means of coming to a 
decision ; but, apart from the time it 
takes and the strain it puts upon one’s 
memory, it is far to be preferred to listen- 
ing to the diverse opinions of five friends. 
There is luck in some cherry-stones, and 
the Hotel von Meissl and Schadn (whatever 
that name may mean), hidden away in a 
sweet old square, where a plash of fountains, 
a fiutter of doves, and the voices of dress- 
maker-girls singing for six o’clock at their 
open windows made a soothing environ- 
ment, had been a kind place to me. 

I have never allowed packing to loom 
ominously and darken the sunshine of a 
whole day ; mine was soon accomplished : 
gulden had been scattered with a lavish- 
ness which can be accounted for when 
you consider that a greasy square of 
bluey-white paper can never be made to 


A Man I Met 


135 


have the qualities and consequence of a 
two-shilling piece. A last ride in the 
brilliant Viennese pair-horse drosclike and 
I was at the station, I was in the train. 
There was no crowd ; a carriage to my- 
self was easy of attainment, and for a 
few moments I sat upright in a corner 
with the conspicuous and aggressive prim- 
ness always manifested by young women 
travelling alone. By-aud-by, however, the 
incurable restlessness of railway stations 
entered into me and tickled in my mind 
and feet until I rose and paraded up and 
down the gallery of the carriage and 
swung at an idle angle from the iron pillar 
by the steps. Five minutes of this assured 
me that nothing of interest was going 
forward in the station, and I returned to 
see if something had happened in the 
carriage, by any chance. Something had 
happened. Two grey, flat, sallow women 
of the milestone-pattern had happened ; 
had moved my knapsacks and plaid, had 
drawn green shades over the lamps — which 
they would not have done had they fore- 
seen the effect on their complexions — and 
had lain down at full length along the 


136 


A Man I Met 


seats and gone to sleep with vocal osten- 
tation. 

If I had not hesitated whether the row 
should be conducted in German or in 
French, they would have been wakened ; 
but in that moment of hesitation my 
anger cooled off, and I collected my goods 
quietly and arranged myself in another 
compartment. 

I was not being ‘‘ seen off ; ” there was no 
occasion to lean from the window and crick 
my neck in bursts of unreasoning platform 
cordiality ; it seemed on the whole a good 
moment to take out and read the stately 
letter of introduction I had received from 
friends in Paris to a great and noble Polish 
family in Cracow. 

The address on this letter was a curious 
mixture of French and Polish ceremony. 
Hard upon the “ Wielmozny Pan,” without 
which no Polish gentleman is addressed, 
followed the double ‘‘Monsieur” of ele- 
gant France, and then the Count’s title. 
I am not able to give the name, since it 
is a real name, belonging to a very proud 
old gentleman, and I am now to relate 
something connected with his family. 


A Man I Met 


137 


A bell clanged in the station as I was 
arranging my thoughts, for at least the 
twentieth time, about the wisdom of in- 
truding, even at the request of friends, 
upon strangers with whom I could have 
nothing in common, and as the bell 
ceased the carriage-door slid back and 
a young officer stepped into the compart- 
ment, wearing one of the gay uniforms 
that had pleased me so much in the 
Stadtgarten at Vienna. He sat down in 
the corner most remote from me, and 
still the train did not start. I decided to 
compare my watch with the station clock, 
and rose to find my way to the platform 
of the carriage, whence I could see it. 
The young officer pushed back the door 
for me, and I bowed gravely — bowed as 
though to some one at the other end of 
a long passage. When I came back the 
train had started, and the officer had com- 
posed himself with his cap over his eyes. 

The peculiarity of my railway journeys 
has ever been that nothing happens. 
Often the mise-en-scene has been of a 
perfection rarely seen on the stage or in 
novels, and yet the incident has per- 


138 


A Man I Met 


sistently tarried. The world has decided 
that it is inadvisable for young women 
to travel alone, because something might 
happen to them, and though I have 
travelled alone rather more than most 
young women, and although adventures 
would have a high money-value for me — 
they do not happen ! Three solid hours 
passed before that young man made an 
appreciable movement, and yet I would 
hardly have said that he was asleep. I 
had had time to observe that he had the 
neat, inexpressive, rather unintelligent face 
common to young military men, and that 
he was dark and short and broad. In 
the past fortnight at Vienna I had seen 
some hundreds of him ; but, remembering 
Flaubert’s suggestion to Guy de Maupas- 
sant, that one should look sufficiently long 
at a grocer to discover in what respect he 
differs from every other grocer, I gazed 
at the officer until I conceded that there 
was an expression on his face, or rather 
on his whole person, that differed from 
that of the other hundreds. It is only in 
books that people open their eyes and 
meet the glance of any one who may be 


A Man I Met 


139 


looking at them. In real life they never 
even know when they are being looked 
at. I was pnzzling to decide what the 
expression exactly was when the yonng 
man made his movement. He stood up 
very straight and very deliberately, un- 
clasped his sword-belt and sabre, and 
placed them carefully in the rack on his 
own side of the carriage. Then he sat 
down again, and the train leaped and 
rattled as before. This time he went to 
sleep. He was certainly asleep when, 
about an hour later, I crossed over to his 
side to escape the draught, which began to 
be cold where before it had been refreshing. 

I do not sleep in trains : I cannot afford 
to sacrifice the ideas that come to me. 
Often and often in tidying up a desk I 
find scraps of paper covered with crazy 
handwriting which records an idea, — often 
very odd, always very useless. It was 
while I was lying in wait for one of these 
ideas that the young man’s sabre fell with 
a crash upon my hat, thereby destroying 
a curve which kindly time had wrought 
in the brim, and which three guineas 
would not have purchased in the Hue de 


140 


A Man I Met 


la Paix. The officer dashed to his feet 
with an inarticulate splutter of exclama- 
tions ; but it was I who picked up the 
sabre and held it as I told him, in 
French, that I was not much startled 
and not at all hurt. I still held the 
sabre when he returned from an excur- 
sion under the seat to recover my hat. 
He apologised with great courtesy, also 
in French, which he spoke well, but with 
an odd accent, flicked the hat carefully 
with a handkerchief, and even blew, very 
gravely, upon the trimming to get rid 
of the dust, and then placed it on the 
seat beside me. I would like to have 
examined the confused leather trappings 
of the weapon I held ; but, as it was, I 
passed it to him with the words, ‘‘Permit 
me, your sword.” 

It was then that the neat, unintelligent 
military face attired itself in a profound 
and subtile expression, and he said, very 
curiously : “ My sword — which is no longer 
my sword.” In French that somehow 
sounds even more remarkable than it does 
in English. Far from having any dislike 
to conversing with strangers, I would 


A Man I Met 


141 


much sooner talk to them than to any 
ordinary acquaintance I have already 
summed up. There is an exhilaration in 
talking to a stranger, and that railway 
carriage reserve which so distinguishes our 
country people is a feeling I have never 
been able to do more than simulate for a 
short time. 

‘‘Monsieur has then retired from the 
army?” I said in a rather colourless way. 
He looked straight at me for quite a 
long time, and I wondered how I had 
thought his face unintelligent. It was still 
a little too neat, but it was filled with a 
very forcible expression: I saw bitterness, 
and pride, and passion, and even shame 
in it. 

“I am disgraced,” he said, in the most 
singular tone possible. “I have been 
requested to resign.” There was a pause. 
I looked away from him to spare him em- 
barrassment. I saw that he felt impelled 
to tell someone of this thing that had hap- 
pened. I understood that he selected a 
stranger in a railway-carriage as a fitting 
confidant. I had, further, the feeling that 
he was speaking of this for the first time — 


142 


A Man I Met 


that his words were forced from him by the 
pressure of a powerful emotion consistently 
repressed, possibly for a long period. It 
was a good deal to see all at once, but I 
gave myself time to think and did not 
speak quickly. Of a sudden the light 
mood in which I had found myself up till 
that moment deserted me quite, and I 
looked at him earnestly as I replied : 

‘‘I do not feel able to believe that you 
have disgraced yourself in any way.” And 
I did not feel able to believe it. 

I scarcely feel able — to believe it — now,” 
he said with great difficulty and slowness, 
‘‘ but it is most true.” Then, with a sudden 
change of manner and a flash of excitement 
that rang in his voice like the crash of 
steel, ‘^Mademoiselle,” he cried, “to you 
it will seem odd that I speak of this infamy 
to a lady whom I have not the honour to 
know. Is that so strange as that a man 
of noble family should be obliged to retire 
from the service of his country because 
of— cowardice ? ” 

“I should have to know what you call 
cowardice,” I said. “There is a cowardice 
which — which is braver than all the 


A Man I Met 


143 


courage in tlie world. And — and there is a 
cowardice which is a matter of health, 
physical health and sick nerves. One 
cannot class all cowardice together and 
vote it dastardly.” He shook his head. 

‘‘But there is a kind of cowardice that 
is only dastardly — and that — that ...” 

“Will you not tell me about it? You 
do not know me, you will never see me 
again, why should you not tell me all 
about it ?” 

“ Y ou are indeed good ; may I do so ? 
It is a short enough story. You — pardon 
me, I perceive that you are English, it is 
only English ladies that have the courage 
to travel by themselves in foreign lands — 
you are from a brave country : all your 
men are brave ” 

“ Indeed they are not ! ” I cried, quickly. 
“I have known several who were nothing 
of the kind.” 

“I, too, am from a brave country. 
Mademoiselle. I am a Pole. Have you 
not read of us? We have always 
been brave — and I have disgraced my 
country.” He stopped, and his lips moved 
and puckered as he looked about the 


144 


A Man I Met 


carriage before lie could command himself 
to go on. Nu, it happened so : you know 
something of military life, perhaps ; you 
know we have our days when we are on 
guard, when we visit our sentry-posts in 
the night I nodded. ‘‘It was my day. 
There is a park not far from Vienna, out 
on the way to Schonbrunn ; at one end of 
it there is a cemetery, now closed ; that 
park is always carefully guarded because 
it abuts upon a bad neighbourhood, where 
disturbances often occur. My rounds were 
to be made between midnight and four 
in the morning, and I left the mess-room 
one night about half-past twelve to make 
them. Mademoiselle, I will beg you to 
believe that I was quite fit to make my 
inspection — although in our regiment we 
had the name of being — of being gay 
fellows, I was quite fit. It was about two 
that I found myself in the Anlagen and 
about to approach, round the wall of the 
cemetery, the most outlying of our sentry- 
posts. Somehow, as I walked, a fear grew 
up in my mind — I cannot know how, I 
could not explain — but it grew upon me, 
and I glanced from side to side, and even 


A Man I Met 


145 


kept stopping to hear if footsteps were 
following me. To this moment, and much 
as I have thought, I cannot go back and 
discover what brought about that state 
of mind ; I cannot even now imagine my 
feelings of that night, but at the time . . . 
they were terrible ! I said to myself a 
thousand times, rather on the field among 
my men would I stand while the enemy’s 
shell tore avenues through our lines, but 
here, where I am afraid — afraid^ and do not 
know of what ! But I forced myself to 
go on; I had only a quarter of a mile to 
that last post ... if I could do it . . . 
Of a sudden some fresh grey wave of 
horror swept over me and I swear to you 
that I do not know how it came to 
me . . . but ... I was running — running, 
and in the opposite direction. Soon I 
forced myself to a walk, but 1 do not have 
any recollection of how I reached my 
rooms that morning. When my servant 
found me I was sitting in an armchair 
by my window, wondering what had 
happened to me, what I had done, and my 
clothes were stiff on my limbs, like the 
plaster of Paris bandages they had on my 
10 


146 


A Man I Met 


leg in Bosnia two years ago. I dressed and 
went on parade, and the world seemed as 
nsual. There was only that one man who 
could know that I had not visited his post 
— unless he had already told the guard 
who relieved him. When I thought of 
this I felt sick, and went about watching 
the men’s faces to see if any looked 
strangely at me. Upon the afternoon of 
the next day I was called to answer an 
enquiry that the police had instituted 
regarding a murder which had taken place 
outside that very park, within a few 
hundred metres of where I had turned 
back. Mademoiselle,” cried the young man, 
his grey face wet with perspiration and 
drawn in lines of the most acute suffering, 
‘‘can you believe that, had I done my 
duty, I would have saved the life of that 
murdered woman ? She was a poor creature, 
one of the unfortunates, and she was foully 
murdered and done to death so close . . . 
the sentry heard a few muffled cries, but 
paid little attention and did not venture 
to leave his post. He was asked why he 
had not reported this to the officer who 
visited him 1 My Grod, you guess his 


A Man I Met 


147 


answer ? He had not seen . . . My Colonel, 
who was always my friend, turned to me 
with perfect confidence, never doubting 
that some explanation would come . . . 
I could only say I had not visited 
that post on that night ! Ah, Mademoiselle, 
you see it all? the enquiries, the scandal 
at mess, my brother officers, the trial — for 
the honour of the regiment it was 
conducted most privately, but I am re- 
quested to send in my papers. It was 
more clemency than I could have hoped, 
and only that my character was high and 
I was about to be cited for promotion, it 
would have been worse. This uniform, 
this sword — they are not mine any longer. 
I only wear them this once to appear 
in them before my family, before my old 
father, whose heart will be broken by 
my disgrace. Can you think what it has 
been all this last while in Vienna ? Cut 
by my acquaintances, ashamed to look 
at my friends, unable to say a word to a 
human being, and with no excuse to offer 
to my own pride.” His face was wet now 
with some few tears as he waited for me 
to speak. 


148 


A Man I Met 


I hope I said the right thing ; I hope I 
did not wound any further that poor, 
proud, broken soul that had suffered so 
much. We sat all night through talking 
of it, and the flat, Polish country streamed 
past the window as I argued and consoled 
and tried to lead the conversation to the 
abstract rather than the more harassing 
personal side of the question. I have 
never believed — 1 never should believe — 
that this young officer was a coward. 
How many men have failed, for a 
moment, as unaccountably, to conduct 
themselves as men are always supposed 
to conduct themselves? 

“See, here is my cross,’’ he said, taking 
a decoration from an inner pocket. “For 
bravery in a skirmish on the frontier 
when I was but a sub -lieutenant. What 
shall I do with it? Shall I fling it out 
of the window?” 

“Keep it carefully,” I answered. “Do 
not teach yourself to believe that you are a 
coward. It is not so. Think of this often : 
it is not only in the army that men have 
to be brave ; you have to meet your father. 
This will nerve you for the meeting.” 


A Man I Met 


149 


Even as I spoke the train drew into 
Cracow Station, and we had arrived. 

There was only a moment for a hand- 
shake and the fewest simplest words that 
I could think of ; then, with my wraps in 
my arms, I listened to his farewell speech, 
and took from his hand the card he 
offered me. (That was rather brave of 
him, I thought.) Refusing any offers of 
assistance, I begged him to speed on his 
way, and collected my affairs. I was in 
a lictle funny cab before I had time to 
look at his card. The name there was 
the same as that on my letter of intro- 
duction. He must be the son, whom I 
remembered hearing was in the Austrian 
army ! 

“ Hotel Europeen,” I said to the driver. 

And it was only once, when evening 
was well fallen, that I ventured to look 
at the outside of that great, old, magnifi- 
cent palace ; for I never presented the 
letter. 



AN IDYLL IN MILLINERY 





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AN IDYLL IN MILLINERY 
I 

The actual reason why Liphook was 
there does not matter : he was there, 
and he was there for the second time 
within a fortnight, and on each occasion, 
as it happened, he was the only man in 
the place — the only man customer in 
the place. A pale, shaven young Jew 
passed sometimes about the rooms, in 
the background. 

Liphook could not stand still ; the 
earliest sign of mental excitement, this ; 
if he paused for a moment in front of 
one of the two console tables and 
glanced into the big mirror, it was only 
to turn the next second and make a 
step or two this way or that upon the 
spacious-sized, vicious-patterned Axminster 
carpet. His eye wandered, but not with- 
out a mark of resolution in its wandering 
— resolution not to wander persistently in 


154 


An Idyll in Millinery 


one direction. First the partings in the 
curtains which ran before the windows 
seemed to attract him, and he glanced 
into the gay grove of millinery that 
blossomed before the hungry eyes of 
female passers-by in the street. Some- 
times he looked through the archways ' 
that led upon each hand to further salons 
in which little groups of women, cus- 
tomers and saleswomen, were collected. 
Sometimes his eye rested upon the seven 
or eight unemployed shop ladies who 
stood behind the curtains, like spiders, 
and looked with an almost malevolent 
contemptuousness upon the street starers 
who came not in to buy, but lingered 
long, and seemed to con the details of 
attractive models. More than once, a 
group in either of the rooms fascinated 
him for full a minute. One particularly, 
because its component parts declared 
themselves so quickly to his apprehension. 

A young woman, with fringe carefully 
ordered to complete formlessness and 
fuzz, who now sat upon a chair and 
now rose to regard herself in a glass as 
she poised a confection of the toque 


An Idyll in Millinery 155 

breed upon her head. With her, a friend, 
older, of identical type, but less serious 
mien, whose face pringled into vivacious 
comment upon each venture ; comment 
which of course Liphook could not over- 
hear. With them both, an elder lady, to 
whom the shopwoman, a person of clever 
d'egage manner and primrose hair, prin- 
cipally addressed herself : appealingly, 
confirmatively, rapturously, critically — 
according to her ideas upon the hat 
in question. In and out of their neigh- 
bourhood moved a middle-aged woman 
of French appearance, short-necked, 
square-shouldered, high-busted, with a 
keen face of chamois leather colour, 
and a head to which the black hair 
seemed to have been permanently glued 
: — Madame Felise herself. When she 
threw a word into the momentous dis- 
cussion the eyes of the party turned 
respectfully upon her ; each woman 
hearkened. Even Liphook divined that 
the girl was buying her trousseau mil- 
linery ; the older sister, or married 
friend, advising in crisp, humorous 
fashion, the elder lady controlling, decid- 


156 


An Idyll in Millinery 


ing, voicing tlie great essential laws of 
order, obligation and convention ; the 
shopwoman playing tlie pipes, the dul- 
cimer, the sackbut, the tabor, or tlie 
viol — Madame Felise the while command- 
ing with invisible baton her intangible 
orchestra ; directing distantly, but with 
ineludable authority, the very players 
upon the stage. At this moment She 
turned to him and his attention neces- 
sarily left the group. How did he find 
this ? Did he care for the immense 
breadth in front ? Everyone in Paris 
was doing it. Wasn’t he on the whole a 
little bit sick of hydrangeas — everyone, 
positively everyone, had hydrangeas just 
now, and hydrangeas the size of cauli- 
flowers. He made replies ; he assumed 
a quiet interest, not too strong to be in 
character ; he steered her away from the 
Parisian breadth in front, away from 
the hydrangeas, into a consideration of 
something that rose very originally at 
the back, and had a ruche of water- 
cresses to lie upon the hair, and three 
dahlias, and four distinct colours of tulle 
in aniline shades, one over the other, and 


An Idyll in Millinery 157 

an osprey, and a bird of Paradise, and a 
few paste ornaments ; and a convincing 
degree of chic in its abandoned hideous- 
ness. Then he took a turn down the room 
towards the group aforesaid. 

“It looks so fearfully married to have 
that tinsel crown, don’t you know!’’ the 
elder sister or youthful matron was say- 
ing. “I mean, it suggests dull calls, 
doesn’ t it % Dull people always have tinsel 
crowns, haven’t you noticed? I don’t 
want to influence you, but as I said 
before, I liked you in the Paris model.” 

Every hat over which you conspicuously 
hover at Felise’s becomes, on the instant, 
a Paris model. 

“So smart, Madam,” cut in the shop- 
lady. “And you can’t have anything 
newer than that rustic brim in shot straw 
with just the little knot of gardenias at 
the side. Oh I do think it suits you 1 ” 

Liphook turned away. After all, he 
didn’t want to hear what these poor, silly, 
feeble people were saying ; he wanted to 
look. ... 

“But Jim always likes me so much in 
pale blue, that I think ” began the girl. 


158 


An Idyll in Millinery 


‘‘ Why not have Just a little tiny knot 
of forget-me-nots with the gardenia. Oh, 
I’m shaw you’d like it.” 

Thus flowed the oily current of the 
shoi3-lady, reaching his ear as Liphook 
returned down the room. He could look 
again in the only direction that won his 
eyes and his thoughts ; five minutes had 
been killed ; there was time left him yet, 
for She had just been seized with the 
idea that something with a little more 
brim was more her style. After all. She 
craved no more than to be loose at 
Felise’s, amid the spring models lit by 
a palely ardent town sun, and Harold’s 
cheque-book looming in the comfortable 
shadow of his pocket. 

At the back of each gilt and mirrored 
saloon was placed a work-table — in the 
manner of all hat-shops — surrounded by 
chairs in which, mostly with their backs 
to the shops sat the girls who were mak- 
ing up millinery ; their ages anywhere 
from sixteen to twenty-one. Seldom did 
the construction of a masterpiece appear 
to concern them ; but they were spangling 
things ; deftly turning loops into bows. 


An Idyll in Millinery 


159 


curling feathers, binding ospreys into close 
sheaves ; their heads all bent over their 
work, their neat aprons tied with tape 
bows at the back, their dull hair half 
flowing and have coiled— the inimitable 
manner of the London work girl — their 
pale faces dimly perceived as they turned 
and whispered not too noisily ; the whole 
thing recalling the soft, quietly murmur- 
ous groups of pigeons in the streets 
gathered about the scatterings of a cab 
horse’s nose-bag. Sometimes shop-girls 
with elaborately distorted hair came up 
and gave them disdainful-seeming orders ; 
but the flock of sober little pigeons mur- 
mured and pecked at its work and rufiied 
no plumage of tan-colour or slate. And 
one of them, different from the others — 
how Liphook’s eyes, in the brief looks he 
allowed himself, ate up the details of 
her guise. Dressed in something — dark- 
blue, it might have been — that fitted with 
a difference over her plump little figure ; 
a fine and wide lawn collar spread over 
breast and shoulders ; a smooth head, with 
no tags and ends upon the pale, yellow- 
tinted brow ; a head as sleek and as 


160 


An Idyll in Millinery 


sweetly-coloured as the coat of the cup- 
board-mouse ; a face so softly indented 
by its features, so fleckless, so mat in its 
flat tones, so mignon in its delicate lack 
of prettiness as to be irresistible. Lips, a 
dull greyish-pink, but tenderly curved at 
the pouting bow and faithfully compressed 
at the dusky downy corners — terribly con- 
scientious little lips that seemed as if 
never could they be kissed to lighter 
humour. Eyes, with pale ash - coloured 
fringes, neither long nor greatly curved, 
but so shy-shaped as ever eyes were ; 
eyes that could only be imagined by Lip- 
hook, and he was sometimes of mind that 
they were that vaporous Autumn blue ; 
and at other times that they were liquid, 
brook-coloured hazel. 

But this was the maddest obsession that 
was riding him ! A London work-girl in 
a West End hat shop, a girl whose voice 
he had never heard, near whom he had 
never, could never, come. And Heaven 
forbid he should come near her ; what 
did he want with her? Before Heaven, 
and all these hats and mirrors. Lip- 
hook could have sworn he wanted nothing 


An Idyll in Millinery 


161 


of her. Yet he loved her completely, 
desperately, exclusively. What name was 
there for this feeling other than the name 
of love ? Soiled with all ignoble use, this 
name of love ; though, to do him justice, 
Liphook was not greatly to blame in that 
matter. He was but little acquainted with 
the word ; he left it out of his affaires de 
coeur, and very properly, for it did not 
enter into them. Still, his feeling for this 
girl, his craving for the sound of her 
voice, his eye fascinated by her smallest 
movement, his yearning for the sense of 
her nearer presence — novel, inexplicable as 
this all was, might it not be love ? He 
stood there ; quiet, inexpressive of face, 
in jealous hope of — what next ? And then 
She claimed his attention — in a whisper 
which brought her head, with its maho- 
gany hair and her face with its ground- 
rice surface, close to his ear. She said : 

‘‘You don’t mind five, eh ? It’s a model 
— and — don’t you think it becomes me? 
I do think this mushroom -coloured velvet 
and just the three green orchids divine 
— and it’s really very quiet ! ” 

He assented, careful to look critically at 
11 


162 


An Idyll in Millinery 


the hat — a clever mass of evilly-imagined, 
ill-assorted absurdities. He had looked too 
long at that work-table, at that figure, at 
that face — he dropped into a chair — let his 
stick fall between his knees and cast his 
eyes to the mirror-empanelled ceiling ; 
there the heads and feet of the passers- 
by Avere seething grotesquely in a fashion 
that recalled the Inferno of an old en- 
graving. 

Well, it would be time to look again 
soon— ah ! she had risen ; thank goodness, 
not a tall woman ; (She was five foot 
nine), small, and indolent of outline. 

‘‘I’ll take it to the French milliner now, 
Madam, and she’ll pin a pink rose in for 
you to see ! ” 

It w^as a shop-woman who, speaking to 
some customer, approached the work-table 
with a hat in her hand. 

“If you please, Mam’zelle Melanie,” she 
began, in a voice meant to impress the 
customer, “would you pin in a rose for 
Madam to try ? Madam thinks the pansy 
rather old-looking — &c., &c., &c.” 

The French milliner ; French, then ! 
And what a dear innocent, young, crusty 


An Idyll in Millinery 


163 


little face ! What delicious surliness : the 
little brown bear that she was, growling 
and grumbling to do a favour. Well, 
bless that woman— and the pansy that 
looked old— he knew her name ; enough to 
recognise ‘her by, enough to address a 
note to her — and it should be a note ! 
A note that would bring out a star in 
each grey eye — they were grey — after all. 
(The grey of a lingering, promising, but 
unbestowing twilight.) Eetlecting, but 
unobservant, his glance left her face and 
focussed the pale, fair, young Jew, who 
was seated, in frock-coat and hat, gloating 
over a pocket-book that had scraps of 
coloured silk and velvet pinned in it. He 
recalled his wandering senses. 

‘‘How much? Eight ten?” 

“Well, Eve taken a little black thing 
as well ; it happens to be very reason- 
able. There, you don’t mind?” Mrs. 
Percival always went upon the principle 
of appearing to be careful of other people’s 
money ; she found she got more of it that 
way. 

“ My dear ! — as long as you are pleased ! ” 
It was weeks since this tone had been 


164 An Idyll in Millinery 

possible to him. He scribbled a cheque 
and they got away. 

“I know I’ve been an awful time, old 
boy,” said the mahogany-haired one, with 
rough good humour — the good humour of 
a vain woman whose vanity has been fed. 
“ Are you coming ? ” 

Er — no ; in fact, I’m going out of town. 
I shan’t see you for a bit — Oh, I wasn’t 
very badly bored, thanks.” 

She made no comment on his reply to 
her question ; her coarsely pretty face 
hardly showed lines of relief, for it was 
not a mobile face ; but she was pleased. 

‘‘ Glad you didn’t fret. I’d never dreamt 
you’d be so good about shopping. Yes, 
I’ll take a cab. There is a call for 12.30, 
and I see it is nearly one now.” 

He put her into a nice-looking hansom, 
lifted his hat and watched her drive 
away. Then he turned and looked into 
the gaudy windows. His feelings were 
his own somehow, now that She had left 
him. He smiled ; love warmed in him. 
Was the old pansy gone and the pink rose 
in its place ? Had she pricked those 
creamy yellow fingers in the doing of it? 


An Idyll in Millinery 165 

No, she was too deft. Tired, flaccid little 
fingers ! Was he never to think of any- 
thing or anyone again, except Mam’zelle 
Melanie ? 

II 

Now the mahogany-haired lady was not 
an actress: she was nothing so common 
as an actress ; she belonged to a mys- 
terious class, but little understood, even if 
clearly realised, by the public. It was not 
because she could not that she did not 
act ; she had never tried to, there had 
been no question of capability — but she 
consented to appear at a famous West 
End burlesque theatre, to oblige the man- 
ager who was a personal friend of long- 
standing. She ‘‘went on” in the ball-room 
scene of a hoary but ever-popular 
“musical comedy,” because there was — not 
a part — but a pretty gown to be filled, 
and because she was surprisingly hand- 
some, and of very fine figure, and 
filled that gown amazingly well. The 
two guineas a week that came her way 
at “Treasury” went a certain distance in 
gloves and cab-fares, and the necessaries 


166 An Idyll in Millinery 

of life she had a different means of 
supplying. Let her position be under- 
stood: she was a very respectable per- 
son : there are degrees in respectability 
as in other things ; there was no fear of 
vulgar unpleasantnesses with her and her 
admirers — if she had them. Mr John 
Holditch, the popular manager of several 
theatres had a real regard for her ; in 
private she called him Jock, old boy,” and 
he called her ‘‘Mill” — because he recol- 
lected her debut ; but the public knew her 
as Miss Mildred Metcalf, and her lady 
comrades in the dressing-room as Mrs 
Percival, and it was generally admitted 
by all concerned that she was equally 
satisfactory under any of these styles. 
Oh, it will have been noticed and need 
not be insisted on, that Liphook called 
her “my dear,” and if it be not pushing 
the thing too far, I may add that her 
mother spoke of her as “ our Florrie.” 

Liphook was a rich man whose occupa- 
tion, when he was in town, was the dividing 
of days between the club, his rooms in 
Half-Moon Street, his mother’s house in 
Belgrave Square, and Mrs Percival’ s abode 


An Idyll in Millinery 167 

in Mansfield Gardens, Kensington. The 
only respect in which he differed from a 
thousand men of his class was, that he 
had visited the hat shop of Madame Felise, 
in the company of Mrs Percival, and had 
conceived a genuine passion for a little 
French milliner who sewed spangles on to 
snippets of nothingness at a table in the 
back of the shop. 

The note had been written, had been 
answered. This answer, in fine, sloping, 
uneducated French handwriting, upon 
thin, lined, pink paper of the foreign 
character, had given Liphook a ridiculous 
amount of pleasure. The club waiters, 
his mother’s butler, his man in Half-Moon 
Street : these unimportant people chiefly 
noted the uncontrollable bubbles of happi- 
ness that floated to the surface of his 
impassive English face during the days 
that followed the arrival of that answer. 
He didn’t think anything in particular 
about it ; few men so open to the attrac- 
tions of women as this incident proves 
him, think anything in particular at all, 
least of all, at so early a stage. He was 
not — for the sake of his judges, it must 


168 


An Idyll in Millinery 


be urged — meaning badly any more than 
he was definitely meaning well. He wasn’t 
mea nin g at all. He cannot be blamed, 
either. The world is responsible for this 
sense of irresponsibility in men of the 
world — who are the world’s sole making. 
Herein he was true to type ; in so far as 
he did not think what the girl meant by 
her answer, type was supported by in- 
dividual character. Liphook was not 
clever, and did not think much or with 
any success, on any subject. And if he 
had he wouldn’t have hit the real reason ; 
only experience would have told him that 
a French work-girl, from a love of pleasure 
and the national measure of shrewd 
practicality combined, never refuses the 
chance of a nice outing. She does not, 
like her English sister, drag her virtue 
into the question at all. 

Never in his life, so it chanced, had 
Liphook gone forth to an interview in 
such a frame of mind as on the day he 
was to meet Melanie outside the Argyll 
Baths in Glreat Marlboro’ Street at ten 
minutes past seven. Apart from the in- 
toxicating perfume that London seemed 


An Idyll in Millinery 169 

to breathe for him, and the gold notes 
that danced in the dull air, there was the 
unmistakable resistant pressure of the 
pavement against his feet (thus it seemed) 
which is seldom experienced twice in a 
lifetime ; in the lifetime of such a man 
as Liphook, usually never. The Argyll 
Baths, Great Marlboro’ Street : what a 
curious place for the child to have chosen, 
and she would be standing there, pretend- 
ing to look into a shop window. Oh, of 
course, there were no shop windows to 
speak of in Great Marlboro’ Street. (He 
had paced its whole length several times 
since the arrival of the pink glazed note.) 
What would she say ? What would she 
look like? Her eyes, drooped or raised 
frankly to his, for instance ? That she 
would not greet him with bold, meaning 
smile and common phrase he knew — he 
felt. Dreaming and speculating, but wear- 
ing the calm leisured air of a gentleman 
walking from one point to another, he 
approached and— yes ! there she was ! A 
scoop-shaped hat rose above the cream- 
yellow brow ; a big dotted veil was loosely 
— was wonderfully — bound about it ; a 


170 


An Idyll in Millinery 


little black caj^e covered the demure lawn 
collar ; quite French bottines peeped below 
the dark -blue skirt. But — she was not 
alone, a man was with her. A man whom, 
even at some distance, he could discern 
to be unwelcome and unexpected, the pale 
fair young Jew in dapper frock-coat, and 
the extravagantly curved over-shiny hat. 
Loathsome looking reptile he was too, so 
thought Liphook as he turned abruptly 
with savage scrape of his veering foot 
upon the pavement, up Argyll Street. 
Perhaps she was getting rid of him ; it 
was only nine minutes past seven, anyhow ; 
perhaps he would be gone in a moment. 
Odious beast ! In love with her, no doubt ; 
how came it he had the wit to recognise 
her indescribable charm ? (Liphook never 
paused to wonder how himself had 
recognised it, though this was, in the 
circumstances, even more remarkable.) 
Anyway, Judging by that look he re- 
membered she would not be unequal to 
rebuffing unwelcome attention. 

Liphook walked as far as Hengler’s 
Circus and read the bills ; the place was 
in occupation, it being early in March. 


An Idyll in Millinery 171 

He studied tlie bill from top to bottom, 
then he turned slowly and retraced his 
steps to the corner. Joy ! she was there 
and alone. His pace quickened, his heart 
rose ; his face, a handsome face, was 
strung to lines of pride, of passionate 
anticipation. 

He had greeted her ; he had heard her 
voice ; so soft — dear Heaven ! so soft — 
in reply ; they had turned and were walk- 
ing towards Soho, and he knew no word 
of what had passed. 

‘‘We will have a cab ; you will give me 
the pleasure of dining with me. I have 
arranged it. Allow me.” Perhaps these 
were the first coherent words that he said. 
Then they drove along and he said inevit- 
able, valueless things in quick order, con- 
scious of the lovely interludes when her 
smooth tones, now wood-sweet, now with 
a harp-like thrilling timbre in them, again 
with the viol — or was it the lute-note ? — a 
sharp dulcidity that made answer in him 
as certainly as the tuning-fork compels its 
octave from the rosewood board. The 
folds of the blue gown fell beside him ; 
the French pointed feet, miraculously 


172 


An Idyll in Millinery 


short-toed, rested on the atrocious straw 
mat of the wretched hansom his blind- 
ness had brought him ; the scoop-hat 
knocked the wicked reeking lamp in the 
centre of the cab ; the dotted veil, tied as 
only a French hand can tie a veil, made 
more delectable the creams and twine- 
shades of the monotonous- coloured kitten 
face. They drove, they arrived somewhere, 
they dined, and then, of all things, they 
went into a church, which, being open and 
permitting organ music to exude from 
its smut-blackened walls, seemed less like 
London than any place they might have 
sought. 

And it happened to be a Catholic 
Church, and he — yes, he actually followed 
the pretty ways of her, near the grease- 
smeared pectine shell with its holy water, 
that stuck from a pillar : some Church 
oyster not uprooted from its ancient bed. 
And they sat on prie-ddeus^ in the dim 
incense- savoured gloom ; little unaspir- 
ing lights seemed to be burning in dim 
places beyond ; and sometimes there were 
voices, and sometimes these ceased again 
and music tilled the dream-swept world in 


An Idyll in Millinery 173 

which Liphook was wrapped and veiled 
away. And they talked — at least she 
talked, low murmurous recital about her- 
self and her life, and every detail sunk 
and expanded wondrously in the hot-bed 
of Liphook’ s abnormally affected mind. 
The evening passed to night, and people 
stepped about, and doors closed with a 
hollow warning sound, that hinted at the 
end of lovely things, and they went out 
and he left her at a door which was the 
back entrance to the Madame Felise’s 
establishment ; but he had rolled back a 
grey lisle-thread glove, and gathered an 
inexpressibly precious memory from the 
touch of that small hand that posed roses 
instead of pansies all the day. 

And, of course, he was to see her again. 
He had heard all about her. How a year 
since she had been fetched from Paris at 
the instance of Goldenmuth. Goldenmuth 
was the fair young Jewish man in the 
frock-coat and supremely curved hat. He 
was a “relative” of Madame Felise, and 
travelled for her, in a certain sense, in 
Paris. He had seen Melanie in an obscure 
corner of the Petit St. Thomas when pay- 


174 


An Idyll in Millinery 


ing an airy visit to a lady in charge of 
some department there. An idea had 
occurred to him ; in three days he arrived 
and made a proposition. He had con- 
ceived the idea of transplanting this 
ideally French work-flower to the London 
shop, and his plan had been a success. 
Her simple, shrewd, much deflned little 
character clung to Melanie in London, as 
in Paris ; she had clever fingers, but 
beyond all, her appearance, which Golden- 
mu th had the art to appreciate, soft but 
marked and unassailable by influence, told 
infinitely at that unobtrusive but con- 
spicuous work-table. 

Half-mouse, half-dove ; never to be 
vulgarised, never to be destroyed. 

Melanie had a family, worthy Epicier 
of JN’antes, her father, her mother, his 
invaluable book-keeper. Her sister Hor- 
tense, cashier at the Restaurant des 
Trois Epees ; her sister Albertine, in the 
millinery like herself.. Every detail de- 
lighted Liphook, every word of her 
rapid incorrect London English sank into 
his mind ; in the extraordinarily narrow 
circumscribed life that Liphook had lived 


An Idyll in Millinery 175 

— that all the Liphooks of the world 
usually do live — a little, naively-simple 
description of some quite different life 
is apt to sound surprisingly interesting, 
and if it comes from the lips of your 

Melanie, why 

But previous to the glazed pink note, 
if Liphook had crystallised any floating 
ideas he might have had as to the nature 
of the intimacy he expected, they would 
have tallied in no particular with the 
reality. In his flrst letter had been 
certain warmly-worded sentences ; at their 
flrst interview when he had interred two 
kisses below the lisle-thread glove, he 
had incoherently murmured something 
lover-like. It had been too dark to see 
Melanie’s face at the moment ; but when 
since, more than once, he had attempted 
simila,r avowals she had put her head on 
one side, raised her face, crinkled up the 
corners of the grey eyes, and twisted 
quite alarmingly the lilac-pink lips. So 
there wasn’t much said about love or any 
such thing. After all, he could see her 
three or four times a week ; on Sunday 
they often spent the whole day together,* 


176 


An Idyll in Millinery 


he could listen to her prattle ; he was a 
silent fellow himself, having never learnt 
to talk and having nothing to talk about ; 
he could, in hansoms and quiet places, 
tuck her hand within his arm and beam 
affectionately into her face, and they grew 
always closer and closer to each other ; as 
camarades^ still only as camarades. She 
never spoke of Goldenmuth except in- 
cidentally, and then very briefly ; and 
Lipliook, who had since seen the man 
with her in the street on two occasions, 
felt very unanxious to introduce the 
subject ; after all he knew more than he 
wanted to about it, he said to himself. 
It was obvious enough. He had bought 
her two hats at Felise’s ; he had begged 
to do as much, and she had advised 
him which he should purchase, and on 
evenings together she had looked ravish- 
ing beneath them. He knew many 
secrets of the hat trade ; he knew and 
delightedly laughed over half a hundred 
fictions Melanie exploded ; he was in a 
fair way to become a man-milliner ; even 
Goldenmuth could not have talked more 
trippingly of the concomitants of capotes. 


An Idyll in Millinery 177 

One Sunday, when the sunniest of days 
had tempted them down the river, he 
came suddenly into the private room 
where they were to lunch and found her 
coquetting with her veil in front of a 
big ugly mirror ; a mad sort of impulse 
took him, he gripped her arms to her 
side, nit)ped her easily off the floor, bent 
his head round the prickly fence of hat- 
brim and kissed her several times ; she 
laughed with the low, fluent gurgle of 
water pushing through a narrow passage. 
She said nothing, she only laughed. 

Somehow it disorganised Liphook. 

“Do you love me? Do you love me?’’ 
he asked rapidly, even roughly, in the 
only voice he could command, and he 
shook her a little. 

She put her head on one side and made 
that same sweet crinkled-up kind of moue 
moquante^ and then spread her palms out 
and shook them and laughed and ran 
away round the table. “Est-ce que je 
sais, moi?” she cried in French. Liphook 
didn’t speak. Oh, he understood her all 
right, but he was getting himself a little 
in hand first. A man like Liphook has 
n 


178 


An Idyll in Millinery 


none of the art of life ; he can’t do 
figure-skating among his emotions like 
your nervous, artistic-minded, intellectu- 
ally trained man. After that one out- 
burst and the puzzlement that succeeded 
it, he was silent, until he remarked upon 
the waiter’s slowness in bringing up 
luncheon. But he had one thing quite 
clear in his thick English head, through 
which the blood was still whizzing and 
singing. He wanted to kiss her again 
badly ; he was going to kiss her again 
at the first opportunity. 

But, of course, when he wasn’t with her 
his mind varied in its refiections. For 
instance, he had come home one night 
from dining at Aldershot — a farewell 
dinner to his Colonel it was — and he had 
actually caught himself saying: ‘‘I must 
get out of it,” meaning his affair with 
Melanie. That was pretty early on, when 
it had still seemed, particularly after 
being in the society of worldly-wise 
friends who rarely, if ever, did anything 
foolish, much less emotional, that he was 
making an ass of himself, or was likely 
to if he didn’t ‘‘get out of it.” Now the 


An Idyll in Millinery 179 

thing had assumed a different aspect. 
He could not give her up ; under no 
circumstances could he contemplate giving 
her up ; well, then, why give her up ? She 
was only a little thing in a hat shop, she 
w^ould do very much better — yes, but, 
somehow he had a certain feeling about 
her, he couldn’t — well, in point of fact, he 
loved her; hang it, he respected her ; he’d 
sooner be kicked out of his Club than say 
one word to her that he’d mind a fellow 
saying to his sister. 

Thus the Liphook of March ’95 argued 
with the Liphook of the past two and 
thirty years ! 


Ill 

Liphook’ s position was awkward — all the 
other Liphook’ s in the world would have 
said it was beastly awkward, supposing 
they could have been made to understand 
it. To many another kind of man this 
little love story might not have been 
inappropriate ; occurring in the case of 
Liphook it was nothing less than melan- 
choly. Not that he felt melancholy about 


180 


An Idyll in Millinery 


it, no indeed ; just sometimes, when he 
happened to think how it was all going 
to end, he had rather a bad moment, but 
thanks to his nature and training he did 
not think often. 

Meantime, he had sent a diamond heart 
to Mrs Percival ; there was more senti- 
ment about a heart than a horse-shoe ; 
women looked at that kind of thing, and 
she would feel that he wasn’ t cooling off ; 
so it had been a heart. That secured him 
several more weeks of freedom at any 
rate, and he wouldn’t have the trouble of 
putting notes in the fire. For, on receiv- 
ing the diamond heart, Mrs Percival be- 
haved like a python after swallowing an 
antelope ; she was torpid in satiety, and 
no sign came from her. 

But one morning Liphook got home to 
Half-Moon Street after his Turkish bath, 
and heard that a gentleman was waiting 
to see him. 

‘‘At least, hardly a gentleman, my lord ; 
I didn’t put him in the library,” explained 
the intuitive Sims. 

Some one from his tailor’s with so-called 
“new” patterns, no doubt ; well 


An Idyll in Millinery 181 

He walked straight into the room, never 
thinking, and he saw Goldenmnth. The 
man had an offensive orchid in his button- 
hole. To say that Liphook was surprised 
is nothing ; he was astounded, and too 
angry to call up any expression whatever 
to his face ; he was rigid with rage. 
What in hell had Sims let the fellow in 
for ? However, this was the last of Sims ; 
Sims would go. 

The oily little brute, with his odious hat 
in his hand, was speaking ; was saying 
something about being fortunate in find- 
ing his lordship, &c. 

‘‘Be good enough to tell me your busi- 
ness with me,’’ said Liphook, with undis- 
guised savagery. Though he had asked 
him to speak, he thought that when her 
name was mentioned he would have to 
choke him. His rival — by gad, this little 
Jew beggar was Liphook’ s rival. Golden- 
muth hitched his sallow neck, as leathery 
as a turtle’s, in his high, burnished collar, 
and took his pocket-book from his breast 
pocket— which meant that he was nerv- 
ous, and forgot that he was not calling 
upon a “wholesale buyer,” to whom he 


182 Idyll in Millinery 

would presently show a pattern. He 
pressed the book in both hands, and 
swayed forward on his toes — swayed into 
hurried speech. 

‘ ‘ Being interested in a young lady 
whom your lordship has honoured with 
your attentions lately, I called to ’ave a 
little talk.” The man had an indescrib- 
able accent, a detestable fluency, a smile 
which nearly warranted you in poisoning 

him, a manner ! There was silence. 

Liphook waited ; the snap with which he 
bit off four tough orange-coloured hairs 
from his moustache, sounded to him like 
the stroke of a hammer in the street. 
Then an idea struck. He put a question : 

“ What has it got to do with you ? ” 

I am interested ” 

‘‘So am I. But I fail to see why you 
should mix yourself up with my affairs.” 

“ Madame Felise feels ” 

“ What’s she got to do with it?” Lip- 
hook tossed out his remarks with the 
nakedest brutality. 

“The lady is in her employment 
and ” 

“Look here; say what you’ve got to 


An Idyll in Millinery 183 

say, or go,” burst from Liphook, with the 
rough bark of passion. He had his hands 
behind his back ; he was holding one with 
the other, in the fear that they might 
get away from him, as it were. His face 
was still immobile, but the crooks of two 
veins between the temples and the eye 
corners stood up upon the skin ; his im- 
passive blue eyes harboured sullen hatred. 
He saw the whole thing. That old 
woman had sent her dirty messenger to 
corner him, to ‘‘ask his intentions,” to 
get him to give himself away, to make 
some promise. It was a kind of black- 
mail they had in view. The very idea 
of such creatures about Melanie would 
have made him sick at another time ; 
now he felt only disgust, and the rising 
obstinacy about committing himself at 
the unsavory instance of Goldenmuth. 
After all, they couldn’t take Melanie from 
him ; she was free, she could go into an- 
other shop ; he could marry. . . . Stop — 
madness ! 

‘ ‘ Mademoiselle Melanie is admitted to 
be most attractive — others have observed 
it ” 


184 


An Idyll in Millinery 


‘‘You mean you have,” sneered Liphook; 
in the most ungentlemanly manner, it 
must be allowed. 

“I must bring to the notice of your 
lordship,” said fche Jew, with the deference 
of a man who knows he is getting his 
point, “ that so young as Mademoiselle is, 
and so innocent, she is not fitted to under- 
stand business questions ; and her parents 
being at a distance, it falls to Madame 
Felise and myself to see that — excuse me, 
my lord, but we know what London is ! — 
that her youth is not misled.” 

“ Who’s misleading her youth ? ” Liphook 
burst out ; and his schoolboy language 
detracted nothing from the energy with 
which he spoke. “You can take my word 
here and now that she is in every respect 
as innocent as I found her. And now,” 
with a sudden reining in of his voice, “we 
have had enough of this talk. If you are 
the lady’s guardians you may reassure 
yourselves : I am no more to her than a 
friend : I have not sought to be any 
more,” Liphook moved in conclusion of 
the interview. 

“Your lordship is very obliging; but I 


An Idyll in Millinery 


185 


must point out that a young and ardent 
girl is likely, in the warmth of her affec- 
tion, to be precipitate— that we would 
protect her from herself.” 

‘‘About this I have nothing to say, and 
will hear nothing,” exclaimed Liphook, 
hurriedly. 

Goldenmuth used the national gesture ; 
he bent his right elbow, turned his right 
hand palm upwards and shook it softly 
to and fro. 

‘ ‘ Perhaps even I have noticed it. I am 
not insensible ! ” 

^ Liphook had never heard a famous 
passage — he neither read nor looked at 
Shakespeare, so this remark merely in- 
censed him. “But,” went on the Jew, 
“since she came to England — for I brought 
her — I have made myself her protector — ” 

“ You’re a liar ! ” said Liphook, who was 
a very literal person. 

“Oh my lord! — I mean in the sense of 
being kind to her and looking after her, 
with Madame Felise’s entire approbation; 
so when I noticed the marked attentions 
of a gentleman like your lordship ” 

“You’re jealous,” put in Liphook, again 


186 


An Idyll in Millinery 


quite inexcusably. But it would be im- 
possible to over-estimate liis contempt for 
this man. Belonging to the uneducated 
section of the upper class he was a man 
of the toughest prejudices on some points. 
One of these was that all Jews were 
mean, scurvy devils at bottom, and that 
no kind of consideration need be shown 
them. Avoid them as you would a ser- 
pent ; when you meet them, crush tbem 
as you would a serpent. He’d never put 
it into words ; but that is actually what 
poor Liphook thought, or at any rate the 
dim idea on which he acted. 

‘‘Your lordship is making a mistake,” 
said Goldenmuth with a flush. “I am not 
here in my own interest ; I am here to 
act on behalf of the young lady.” Had 
the heavens fallen ? In her interest % 
Then Melanie % Never ! As if a Thing like 
this could speak the truth ! 

“ Who sent you ? ” Liphook always went 
to the point. 

“Madame Felise and I talked it over 
and agreed that I should make it con- 
venient to call. We have both a great 
regard for Mademoiselle ; we feel a 


An Idyll in Millinery 187 

responsibility — a responsibility to her 
parents.’’ 

What was all this about ? Liphook was 
too bewildered to interrupt even. 

“Naturally, we should like to see Made- 
moiselle in a position, an assured position 
for which she is every way suited.” 

So it was as he thought. They 
wanted to rush a proposal. Must he 
chaffer with them at all ? 

“I can tell you that if I had anything 
to propose I should write it to the lady 
herself,” he said. 

“We are not anxious to come between 
you. I may say I have enquired — my 
interest in Mademoiselle has led me to 
enquire — and Madame Felise and I think 
it would be in everyway a suitable con- 
nection for her. Your lordship must feel 
that we regard her as no common girl ; 
she deserves to be Icuncee in the right 
manner ; a settlement — an establishment — 
some indication that the connection will 
be fairly permanent, or, if not, that suit- 
able—” 

“Is that what you are driving at, you 
dog, you?” cried Liphook, illuminated at 


188 An Idyll in Millinery 

length and boiling with passion. ‘‘So 
you want to sell her to me and take 
your blasted commission Get out of 
my house!’’ He grew suddenly quiet; it 

was an ominous change. “Get out, this 

before ” 

Goldenmuth was gone, the street door 
banged. 

“ God ! God ! ” breathed Liphook with his 
hand to his wet brow, “what a hellish 
business 1 ” 

* * * * * 

It was nine o’clock when Liphook came 
in that night. He did not know where 
he had been, he believed he had had 
something in the nature of dinner, but 
he could not have said exactly where he 
had had it. 

Sims handed him a note. 

He recognised a friend’s hand and read 
the four lines it contained. 

“When did Captain Throgmorton come, 
then?” 

“Came in about three to ’alf-past, my 
lord ; he asked me if your lordship had 
any engagement to-night, and said he 
would wait at the Club till quarter past 


An Idyll in Millinery 189 

eight and that he should dine at the 
Blue Posts after that.” 

“I see; well,” he reflected a moment, 
‘‘Sims, pack my hunting things, have 
everything at St. Pancras in time for 
the ten o’clock express to-morrow, and,” 
he reflected again, “Sims, I want you to 
take a note — no, never mind. That’ll do.” 

“Y’ry good, my lord.” 

Yes, he’d go. Jack Throgmorton was 
the most companionable man in the world 
— he was so silent. Liphook and he had 
been at Sandhurst together, they had 
joined the same regiment. Liphook had 
sent in his papers rather than stand the 
fag of India; Throgmorton had “taken 
his twelve hundred” rather than stand 
the fag of anywhere. He was a big 
heavy fellow with a marked difficulty in 
breathing, also there was fifteen stone of 
him. His round eyes, like “bull’s-eyes,” 
the village children’s best-loved goodies, 
stuck out of a face rased to an even 
red resentment. He had the hounds 
somewhere in Bedfordshire. His friends 
liked him enormously, so did his enemies. 
To say that he was stupid does not touch 


190 An Idyll in Millinery 

tlie fringe of a description of Mm. He 
had never had a thought of his own, nor 
an idea ; all the same, in any Club quarrel, 
or in regard to a point of procedure, his 
was an opinion other men would willingly 
stand by. At this moment in his life, a 
blind instinct taught Liphook to seek his 
society ; no one could be said to sum up 
more completely, perhaps because so un- 
consciously, the outlook of Liphook’ s 
world, which of late he had positively 
begun to forget. The thing was bred into 
Throgmorton by sheer, persistent sticking 
to the strain, and it came out of him 
again mechanically, automatically, distilled 
through his dim brain a triple essence. 
The kind of man clever people have found 
it quite useless to run down, for it has 
been proved again and again that if he 
can only be propped up in the right place 
at the right moment, you’ll never find 
his equal in that place. Altogether, a 
handsome share in ‘‘the secret of England’s 
greatness” belongs to him. The two men 
met on the platform beside a pile of 
bags and suit cases, all with Viscount 
Liphook’ s name upon them in careful 


An Idyll in Millinery 191 

uniformity. Sims might have had the 
administration of an empire’s affairs upon 
his mind, whereas he was merely chaper- 
oning more boots and shirts than any 
one man has a right to possess. 

‘‘You didn’t come last night,” said 
Captain Throgmorton, as though he had 
only just realised the fact. He prefaced 
the remark by his favourite ejaculation 
which was “Harr-rr” — he prefaced every 
remark with “Harr-rr” — on a cold day it 
was not uninspiriting if accompanied by 
a sharp stroke of the palms; in April it 
was felt to be somewhat out of season. 
But Captain Throgmorton merely used it 
as a means of getting his breath and his 
voice under weigh. “Pity,” he went on, 
without noticing Liphook’s silence, “good 
bone.” This summed up the dinner with 
its famous marrow-bones, at the Blue 
Posts. 

They got in. Each opened a Morning 
Post. Over the top of this fascinating 
sheet they flung friendly brevities from 
time to time. 

“Shan’t have more than a couple more 
days to rattle ’em about,” Captain Throg- 


192 


An Idyll in Millinery 


morton remarked, after half-an-lionr’ s 
silence, and a glance at the liying hedges. 

Liphook began to come back into his 
world. After all, it was a comfortable 
world. Yet had an angel for a time 
transfigured it, ah dear ! how soft that 
angel’s wings, if he might be folded 

wdthin them old world, dear, bad, 

old world, you migHt roll by. 

They were coming home from hunting 
next day. Each man bent ungainly in 
his saddle ; their cords were splashed ; the 
going had been heavy, and once it had 
been hot as well, but only for a while. 
Then they had hung about a lot, and 
though they found three times they 
hadn’t killed, Liphook was weary. When 
Throgmorton stuck his crop under his 
thigh, hung his reins on it, and lit a 
cigar, Liphook was looking up at the 
sky, where dolorous clouds of solid purple 
splotched a background of orange, flame- 
colour, and rose. Throgmorton’s pepper- 
mint eye rolled slowly round when it left 
his cigar-tip ; he knew that when a man 
— that is, a man of Liphook’ s sort — 
is found staring at a thing like the sunset 
there is a screw loose somewhere. 


An Idyll in Millinery 


193 


‘‘Wha’ is it, Harold?” lie said, on one 
side of liis cigar. 

Lip hook made frank answer. 

‘‘ What’s she done then ?” 

‘‘ Oh, Lord, it isn’t lierP 

‘^’Nother?” said Jack, without any 
show of surprise, and got his answer 
again. 

“What sort?” This was very difficult, 
but Liphook shut his eyes and flew it. 

“How old?” 

“Twenty,” said Liphook, and felt a 
rapture rising. 

“Jack, man,” he exclaimed, under the 
influence of the flame and rose, no 
doubt, “what if I were to. marry?” 

Throgmorton was not, as has been in- 
dicated, a person of fine fibre. “Ho, and 
be done with ’em,” said he. And after 
all, as far as it went, it was sound 
enough advice. 

“ 1 mean marry her,” Liphook exclaimed, 
and the explanation cost him a consider- 
able expenditure of pluck. 

An emotional man would have fallen 
off his horse — if the horse would have 
let him. Jack’s horse never would have 
13 


194 An Idyll in Millinery 

let Mm. Jack said nothing for a 
moment ; his eye merely seemed to 
swell ; then he put another question. 

‘‘Earl know about it ? ” 

“By G-eorge, I should say not.” 

“ Harr-rr.” 

That meant that the point would be 
resolved in the curiously composed brain 
of Captain Throgmorton, and by common 
consent not another word was said on 
the matter. 


IV 

Two days had gone by. Liphook’ s com- 
fortable sense of having acted wisely in 
coming out of town to think the thing 
over still supported him, ridiculous though 
it seems. For of course he was no more 
able to think anything over than a Hot- 
tentot. Thinking is not a natural pro- 
cess at all ; savage men never knew of 
it, and many ' people think it quite as 
dangerous as it is unnatural. It has 
become fashionable to learn thinking, 
and some forms of education undertake 


An Idyll in Millinery 


195 


to teach it ; but Liphook had never gone 
through those forms of education. After 
all, to understand Liphook, one must 
admit that he approximated quite as 
nearly to the savage as to the civilised 
and thinking man, if not more nearly. 
His appetites and his habits were mainly 
savage, and had he lived in savage times 
he would not have been touched by a kind 
of love for which he was never intended, 
and his trouble would not have existed. 
However, he was as he was, and he was 
thinking things over ; that is, he was wait- 
ing and listening for the most forceful of 
his instincts to make itself heard, and 
he had crept like a dumb unreasoning 
animal into the burrow of his kind, 
making one last effort to be of them. 
At the end of the week his loudest in- 
stinct was setting up a roar ; there could 
^be no mistaking it. He loved her. He 
could not part from her ; he must get 
back to her ; he must make her his and 
carry her off. 

Sorry to be leaving you. Jack,” he 
said one morning at the end of the 
week. They were standing looking out 


196 


An Idyll in Millinery 


of the hall door together and it was raining. 
“ But I find I must go up this morning.” 

Throgmorton rolled a glance at him, 
then armed him into the library and shut 
the door. 

‘‘ What are yon going to do ? ” 

Marry her.” 

There was a silence. They stood there, 
the closest feeling of friendship between 
them, not saying a word. 

“ My dear Harold,” said Throgmorton at 
length, with much visible and more in- 
visible effort ; he put a hand heavily on 
Liphook’s shoulder and blew hard in his 
mute emotion. Then he put his other 
hand on Liphook’s other shoulder. Lip- 
hook kept his eyes down ; he was richly 
conscious of all Jack was mutely saying ; 
he felt the weight of every unspoken 
argument ; the moment was a long one, 
but, for both these slow-moving minds a 
very crowded moment. 

‘‘Come to the Big Horn Mountains with 
me,” Throgmorton remarked suddenly, 

“ and har-rr write to her from 

there.” 

He was proud of this suggestion ; he 


An Idyll in Millinery 197 

knew the value of a really remote point 
to write from. It was always one of the 
first things to give yonr mind to, the 
choice of a geographically well-nigh inac- 
cessible point to write from. First you 
found it, then you went to it, and when 
you got there, by Jove, you didn’t need 
to write at all. Liphook smiled in im- 
partial recognition of his friend’s wisdom, 
but shook his head. 

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve thought it all 
over ” — he genuinely believed he had — “and 
I’m going to marry her. Jack, old man, 
I love her like the very devil ! ” 

In spite of the grotesqueness of the 
phrase, the spirit in it was worth having. 

Throgmorton’s hands came slowly off 
his friend’s shoulders. He walked to the 
window, took out a very big handker- 
chief and dried his head. He seemed to 
look out at the dull rain battering on the 
gravel and digging yellow holes. 

“I’ll drive you to meet the 11.15,” he 
said at last and went out of the room. 

Liphook put up his arms and drew a 
deep breath ; it had been a stiff engage- 
ment. He felt tired. But no, not tired. 


198 An Idyll in Millinery 

Roll by, 0 bad old world — he has chosen 
the angel’s wing ! 

Net one word had passed about Golden- 
muth, Madame Felise, or the astounding 
interview ; a man like Liphook can always 
hold his tongue ; one of his greatest 
virtues. Besides, why should he ever 
think or breathe the names of those 
wretches again ? Jack Throgmorton, in 
his splendid ignorance, would have been 
unable to throw light upon the real 
motives of these simple, practical French 
people. Liphook to his dying day would 
believe they had given proof of hideous 
iniquity, while in reality they were 
actuated by a very general belief of the 
'bourgeoises that to be “established,” with 
settlements, as the mistress of a viscount, 
is quite as good as becoming the wife of 
a grocer. They had been, perhaps, wicked, 
but innocently wicked ; for they acted 
according to their belief, in the girl’s 
best interest. Unfortunately they had had 
an impracticable Anglais to deal with and 
had had to submit to insult ; in their first 
encounter, they had been worsted by 
British brute stupidity.^ 


An Idyll in Millinery 


199 


Witli a constant dull seething of im- 
pulses that quite possessed him, he got 
through the time that had to elapse before 
he could hear from her in reply to his 
short letter. He had done with thinking. 
A chance meeting with his father on the 
sunny side of Pall Mall one morning did 
not even disquiet him. His every faculty, 
every fibre was in thrall to his great 
passion. The rest of life seemed minute, 
unimportant, fatuous, a mass of trivial 
futilities. 

There were two things in the world, and 
two only. There was Melanie, and there 
was love. Ah, yes, and there was time ! 

Why did she not answer? 

A note from the bonnet-shop, re-enclos- 
ing his own, offered an explanation that 
entered like a frozen knife-blade into 
Liphook’s heart. She had left. She was 
gone. Gone altogether, for good. 

Absurd ! Hid they suppose they could — 
oh, a higher price was what they wanted. 
He’d go ; by God he’d give it. Was he 
not going to marry her? He hurried to 
the hat-shop ; he dropped into the chair 
he had occupied when last in the shop, let 


200 


An Idyll in Millinery 


his stick fall between his knees and stared 
before him into the mirrored walls. All 
the same tangled scene of passing people, 
customers, shop-women, and brilliant mil- 
linery was reflected in them ; only the 
bright hats islanded and steady among 
this ugly fluctuation. Pools of fretful 
life, these circular mirrors ; garish, dis- 
comfiting to gaze at ; stirred surely by 
no angel unless the reflection of the 
mouse - maiden should ever cross their 
surfaces. 

Fifteen minutes later he was standing 
gazing at the horrid clock and ornaments 
in ormolu that stood on the mantel- piece 
of the red velvet salon where he waited 
for Madame Felise. 

She came. Her bow was admirable. 

“I wrote to Mademoiselle, and my letter 
has been returned. The note says she 
has gone.” Liphook’s schoolboy bluntness 
came out most when he was angry. 
‘‘Where has she gone ? And why ? ” 

“Aha! Little Mademoiselle! Yes, in- 
deed, she has left us and how sorry we 
are! Chere petite! But what could we 
do? We would have kept her, but her 


An Idyll in Millinery 


201 


parents A shrug and a smile punctu- 

ated the sentence. 

“ What about her parents ? ” 

‘‘They had arranged for her an alliance 
— what would you have? — we had to let 
her go. And the rezponsibility — after 
all ” 

“What sort of an alliance ? ” The dog- 
like note was in his voice again. 

“ But — an alliance ! I believe very good ; 
a cJiarpentier — a char cutter^ I forget— but 
Men solide ! ” 

“Do you mean you have sold her to 
some French ” 

“ Ah, my lord ! how can you speak such 
things % Her parents are most rezpec table, 
she has always been most rezpectable — 
naturally we had more than once felt 
anxious here in London ” 

“I wish to marry her,” said Liphook 
curtly, and he said it still, though he 
believed her to have been thrust upon a 
less reputable road. It was his last, his 
greatest triumph over his world. It fitted 
him nobly for the shelter of the angel’s 
wing. He had learnt the worst — and 

“I wish to marry her,” said Liphook. 


202 


An Idyll in Millinery 


‘‘Helas! — but she is married ! ” shrieked 
Madame Felise in a mock agony of regret, 
but with surprise twinkling in her little 
black eyes. 

Married ! ’’ shouted Liphook. Impos- 
sible ! ” 

‘‘Ask Mr Goldenmuth, he was at the 
wedding.’’ Madame laughed ; the true 
exidanation of my lord’s remarkable state- 
ment had just struck her. It was a ruse ; 
an English ruse. She laughed very much, 
and it sounded and looked most un- 
pleasant. 

‘ ‘ His lordship was — a little unfriendly — 
a little too — too reserved — not to tell us, 
not even to tell Mademoiselle herself that 
he desired to marry her,” she said with 
villainous archness. 

Liphook strode to the door. Yes, why, 
why had he not ? 

“I will find her; I know where her 
relatives live. If it is a lie — I’ll make 
you sorry ” 

“ Fi done., what a word ! The ceremony 
at the Mairie was on Thursday last.” 

They were going downstairs and had to 
pass through the showrooms — quite near 


An Idyll in Millinery 203 

— ah, quite near — the table where the 
little grey and brown pigeons sat clus- 
tered, where the one ring-dove had sat 
too. 

“It is sometimes the fate of a lover 
who thinks too long,” Madame was say- 
ing, with an air of much philosophy. 
“But see now, if my lord would care to 
send a little souvenir” — Madame reached 
hastily to a model on a stand — comme 
cadeau de 7ioce here is something quite 
exquis ! ” She kissed the tips of her brown 
fingers— inimitably, it must be allowed. 
“ So simple, so young, so innocent— I could 
pose a little noeud of myosotis. Coming 
from my lord, it would be so delicate ! ” 

Liphook was in a shop. There were 
people about. He was a lover, he was 
a fool, he was a gentleman. 

“Er — thank you — not to-day,” he said; 
the air of the world he had repudiated 
came back to him. And a man like Lip- 
hook doesn’t let you see when he is hit. 
That is the beauty of him. He knew it 
was true, but he would go to Paris ; yes, 
though he knew it was true. He would 
not, could not see her. But he would go. 


204 An Idyll in Millinery 

He stood a moment in the sun outside 

the shop, its windows like gardens behind 
him ; its shop-ladies like evil-eyed reptiles 
in these gardens. The carpets, the mirrors 
on the wall, the tables at the back — and 
it was here he had first seen the tip and 
heard the flutter of an angel’ s wing ! 

‘‘Lord Liphook,” said a voice, “what 

an age ” 

He turned and lifted his hat. 

His world had claimed him. 


A COWL IN CRACOW 


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A COWL IN CRACOW 


It was while I was in Cracow, spending 
my days happily and quietly in wan- 
derings whose vagueness I jealously 
guarded from the narrowing influences 
of the guide-book. My excursions had 
been governed by a principle which holds 
a vast amount of satisfaction — for me : 
each morning I had sallied forth and 
walked to the root of some impressive 
spire which had seemed to call me, and 
I could never tell the world of old houses 
and rich pink brick-work that I delighted 
in as I went. 

One spire only puzzled me. Twice I had 
started for it, each time I had arrived, 
hot and interested, quite elsewhere. Need- 
less to say, it gathered an imaginary 
importance, and I marked it down finally 
with a sporting eye, and started to walk it 
up scientifically, keeping it well to wind- 
ward, and making use of all available 


208 


A Cowl in Cracow 


cover. I skirted the somewhat French 

% 

quarter of the town, and passed through 
the Jewish colony, and thence away by 
a road that seemed aiming for the open 
country, when at length I recognised my 
spire caught in a thicket of big trees from 
which grew the long sides of a raspberry- 
coloured building of many windows and 
a pervading silence. Silences slept in its 
courtyard and beneath the empty arches 
of its doorways, silence browsed with the 
brown cow in the centre of its grass-plot. 
In all the rooms and ways of it, nothing 
was stirring. And yet it did not seem 
dead ; on the contrary, windows were 
open, and curtains not a fortnight 
starched fluttered at its sills. My intru- 
sion — for I intruded quite promptly — 
excited no attention ; unless perhaps the 
cow noticed me. I surveyed the two 
stories on three sides of me, and the 
tower in the trees, and I could come to 
no conclusion ; if it were a nunnery 
(which might account for the tower) why 
had it not the traditional high-wall all 
round it ? Why was it open to the little 
by-way and gate, through which I had 


A Cowl in Cracow 


209 


approached ? Where was the surly porter 
who, through a grating, should have kept 
the world at bay ? 

Now, I do not need any one to tell me 
that my next act was inexcusable. I 
know this, but perhaps it was justified. 
However, you are to hear, and can judge. 
I walked in at one of those doorways, 
choosing, for preference, one through 
which a sunbeam was preceding me, 
and I set a resolute but reasoning foot 
upon the stairway. It was thus I rea- 
soned : the worst that could happen to 
me would be to be turned out, which 
would not be injurious ; and the best 
that could happen to me would be to 
discover my whereabouts, and perhaps 
have an amusing conversation with an 
inmate. At the best, I could apologise 
with such wit and grace as the moment 
vouchsafed me ; at the worst, I could but 
appear a stupid and intrusive foreigner. 

It was in this philosophic spirit that I 
ascended two flights of stairs and turned 
with a degree of deprecation along a 
flagged corridor ; but it was not exactly 
in this spirit that I found myself oppo- 
14 


210 


A Cowl in Cracow 


site an open door, and regarding a young 
man shaving himself before a glass ; a 
young man attired in a more surprising 
costume than I have ever happened to 
imagine. He did not see me, it was his 
profile that I was regarding, and my eye 
travelled from the cheek he was elabor- 
ately scraping, to the curious cream- 
woollen and cotton dress which clothed 
him. Then it struck me that he was 
some kind of a priest or monk. I was 
in a monastery ! It will not hurt me 
to admit that a thrill, strange to me 
since, years before, I depleted a store- 
cupboard of some preserved American 
limes, flickered and prickled in the nape 
of my neck and down my spine. It was 
then that the young man put down his 
razor, and in turning sideways caught 
sight of my quite motionless figure. I 
expect monks are a pretty transcendental 
kind of people, and perhaps a little ex- 
alted in their minds ; at any rate, that 
one treated me with the respectful stare 
one would lavish on a being from another 
world. Certainly he did not think I was 
real ; and I do not blame him. To me, he 


A Cowl in Cracow 


211 


appeared a creature in a front scene, I 
one of the audience, of whom nothing but 
attention was expected. He began speak- 
ing in a tremulous rapid undertone, in 
Polish, and I, feeling the situation so 
absurd and so unreal, laughed and begged 
him, in French, to forgive my invasion. 
I felt, in a silly sort of way, that my 
simple person stood for the outside world, 
and vanity, and folly, and perhaps wicked- 
ness — and it amused me, and made me 
wish I knew how to giggle, and could 
have giggled then. But he wiped the soap 
from his face with a long narrow strip of 
the hardest huck-a-back towelling I have 
ever seen, which hung by a tag from the 
wall, and looked at me, still with a rather 
dazed face, but conciliatory. 

^‘Madame, are you an apparition he 
said gently, and with a smile glimmering 
through his surprise. 

I nodded pleasantly. 

■ “ And how is it that ... do you want 
anything of me?’’ He had altered his 
phrase, and this second one had in it a 
note of eagerness that did not chime in 
with my ideas of the conventual manner. 


212 


A Cowl in Cracow 


“Thank you, I do not know that I want 
anything now,’’ I replied. “I did want 
to know what this place was, and I came 
up — Here the feebleness of my case 
overcame me, and I did not proceed with 
my explanations. The young man, how- 
ever, did not seem to notice any flaws in 
my remarks ; he was rather thinking with- 
in himself as he reached a white serge 
garment from a narrow bed, and slipped 
into it mechanically. I am a stranger ; 
I think I just wanted to be — interested,” 
1 supplemented. 

“You are the only stranger that has set 
foot within this building,” he said gravely, 
“since I came here, a stranger, fifteen 
months ago.” 

“But there is nothing to prevent any- 
body coming in, that I can see,” said I, 
in defence of my presence. “It’s all quite 
open.” 

“We are known, the views of our order 
and its laws, in Cracow ; no one belonging to 
this place would pass that first gateway.” 

“ Wouldn’t they, indeed?” said I, much 
interested. 

“And why did you come here?” The 


A Cowl in Cracow 


213 


minute I had said it, I felt this remark to 
be inquisitive, but I must have appeared 
so inquisitive altogether that a little 
more or less could not matter. And the 
young Brother in no way resented the 
inquiry. 

“I came here by— a trick ! he replied, 
with some fierceness. And I leaned back 
upon the stonework and blinked at him. 
The oddness of my position struck me far 
more forcibly than before, and though he 
was speaking, even asking me questions, 
it all went by me as though I watched it 
in a dream, until at last I woke, and he 
seemed to be telling me about himself. 

“I was intended for the Austrian Diplo- 
matic Service,” he was saying, ‘^and was 
passing through a course at the University 
in Paris. I had never had great sympathy 
with my family, and I disliked the Austrian 
ideas and infiuence. I am a Pole, and I 
love my own country. In Paris I met 
others of the same mind. I became one 
of them. . . . We had our dreams, and 

we hoped. I see now that I abused my 
father’s confidence, but my punishment has 
been bitter. For ten months I laboured 


214 


A Cowl in Cracow 


secretly, put aside my title, and travelled 
to Switzerland, to London, lectured and 
spoke for our cause, and told my family 
no word of what I was doing. It does 
not matter, it would not matter if I told 
you the whole of it now, for I am as 
dead to the world as if I were in a 
silver tomb in the vaults of Wawel ; but 
it broke up my life. A lady at whose 
house I visited in Paris learned something 
of my pursuits, and wrote to my family. 

I do not say that she meant ill. I was 
recalled to Vienna to join my father, who 
has a high position there, and is much 
favoured by the Emperor. He spoke to 
me of the ruin of our house, of my 
mother and sisters ; in spite of his name, 
he is a modern, he swims — with the tide. . 
I was at once offered a post at a court, 
and compelled to mix with men of my 
father’s opinions. And I, could not bear 
it. I promised my father to follow any 
profession, to enter on any way of life 
that did not entail my bending my pride 
so low, my living in a nest of lies, eating 
them, breathing them, lying down at night 
with them. ‘Any life?’ said my father. 


A Cowl in Cracow 


215 


^ Any life,’ I answered. ‘A Czernowietzki 
never breaks his word,’ said he. ‘Nor 
binds himself to false oaths,’ said I. That 
was the end. I left my father at his 
Grovernment office, and on my return to 
the hotel of my brother a note awaited 
me. It announced that this” — the young 
man waved his arm in the direction of 
his narrow bed and single prie-dien — “was 
my father’s choice for me. For fifteen 
months I have seen no one belonging to 
the world — the world I love. No one till 
yon came. Mademoiselle ! Your chance 
visit — I think yon have dropped from the 
skies — excites all my old longing for the 
life I have left.” 

“Why not leave this life and go back 
to Paris ? Cut yourself off from your 
family — you are cut off from them now 
— and make your own life what you 
please.” 

The Brother smiled and shook his head, 
looking dreamily into the elm-branches 
that smothered the root of my spire. 

“Do you know Paris?” he said wist- 
fully. 

“Well. I have just left there.” 


216 


A Cowl in Cracow 


“And you return . . lie said, with 
sudden eagerness. 

“Oh, in about three months, perhaps.” 

“Mademoiselle, you have it in your 
power to do me the greatest possible 
service . . . you comprehend . . . the 
greatest possible sermce. Will you do 
it \ It will not trouble you much, you 
who have fallen from the clouds to give 
me comfort ! Will you do it 

He was extraordinarily excited ; his 
face, which was pale, flushed a very dark 
colour, and he panted as he spoke. I 
stood away from the cold stone balus- 
trade on which I had been leaning 
during this remarkable interview, and put 
a foot over the threshold of his cell. 

“But certainly I will do it, I will do 
anything in my power that will really 
serve you,” I said. “ Only tell me . . . ” 
A bell — such a nasty, tinny, ascetic, in- 
human sort of bell — rang out from the 
spire. The young man looked nervously 
towards his window, but began speaking 
rapidly to me, as though time were 
precious. 

“I left Paris hastily, as you have 


A Cowl in Cracow 


217 


heard ; there was not time to see or 
explain to all my friends ; one of them, 

. . . Mademoiselle, I am trusting yon, 
and speaking with my soul, and yet 
even a dead man hesitates to talk of 
that which is his heart’s lining, so to 
say ; . . . but I have thought so much 
and there is no way ; my mother, my 

sisters would not help me, even if I 
could get word to them, but letters 
are inspected, and I, sacred God, I 

am supposed to have given up such 

thoughts ! ” 

‘‘You cannot mean that you are go- 
ing to spend all your life here, doing 

nothing ? Oh, do not be so mad. Come 
away ! Come away now, no one saw me 
enter, none will see you go out. Come, 
and let me help you back to Paris — I 
have money if you need it — let me help 
you back to ... to the lady you have 
not forgotten.” It was a venture, but I 
never was surer of anything than of 
that lady’s existence when I spoke. He 
stooped with a strange graceful sudden- 
ness, and kissed my hand. 

“Dear lady,” he said, “there is my 


218 


A Cowl in Cracow 


oath,” and the words choked him as he 
said them. ^‘But time is short, let me 
think ... a Brother might pass at any 
moment ; I must write a letter, and you, 
ah, I am afraid it is too hard for you 
to find her and to deliver it ! She may 
not be in the same place, she may be 
— no, God is not cruel . . . she is not 
married.” The simple faith of that man’s 
voice, as he said these last words, is 
what I have never heard, nor ever 
expect to hear the like of. I knew very 
soon I should be crying. 

‘‘Well, won’t you write?” I said. ‘‘I 
will find her. Tell me only your name,” 
1 added with a sudden inspiration, “and be 
quick and write the letter.” He had 
already found his paper and pen ; it was 
a stiff, curious piece of paper, and he 
was flinging words upon it. 

“I am Stanislaw Czernowietzki, Count, 
of the province of . . .” 

“You are Brother Stanislaw, of the 
Order of the White Brothers of Jesus 
and John,” said a voice in the corridor. 

I have never been so startled in my 
life, as when, with chill, frozen slowness, 


A Cowl in Cracow 


219 


I turned, and saw that white man stand- 
ing behind me. 

It was not for myself I was frightened, 
for nothing conld happen to me — but the 
poor count ! And his half- written letter ! 
For ten seconds — fifteen perhaps — no one 
spoke. I admit I had quite lost my head, 
but it only struck me that all Poles do 
not know German, and I assumed that 
the Superior did not and that the Count 
did. 

“For heaven’s sake, the address, only 
the address ! ” I exclaimed, with the stray 
South German accent of my school-days 
which recurs to me in moments of 
excitement ; but the Count’s hands had 
fallen to his sides, and the new-comer 
was addressing him over my head in 
Polish and with great severity. I knew 
it was about me, but my wits had not 
come back to me quite or I would have 
behaved with more dignity. I put out 
my hand for the letter. 

“The name, just the bare name ! ” I said 
wildly. 

“Ah, no! Go, Madame, pray go . . . 
I beg of you.” 


220 


A Cowl in Cracow 


It was tlie Count speaking with strange 
bitter self-possession, and that should 
have brought me to myself. I turned 
to the Superior . . . I do not know 

exactly what I said, but I smiled, in 
my nervousness, actually smiled on the 
horrid creature who had appeared so 
inopportunely. 

‘‘Madame, of your goodness — go — and 
thank you!” said the soft voice of the 
Count behind me. 

And without a word more I went. 
Down the stairs and out into the court 
unmolested, and the slamming of one 
heavy door — that of the Count’s cell, I 
felt sure — was the sound that followed 
me into the sunshine. 


Some Whims of Fate 



BY 

MfiNIE MURIEL DOWIE 

AUTHOR OF 

“a girl iK the KARPATHIANS,” 

“ GALLIA,” ETC. 



¥ 


JOHN LANE 

THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
1896 




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